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Leadership development has been viewed as a foundational component of agriculture education and the FFA since the early 20th century (Hoover, Scholl, Dunnigan, & Mamontova, 2007). To contribute to previous research in the field of leadership, this study lays the framework for future studies on the leadership styles of those individuals who lead today's youth in FFA programs across the State of Texas. This study describes FFA advisors of successful FFA programs in terms of their leadership styles, leadership training/educational background, and suggests how FFA advisors could use their leadership styles to improve their programs. Participants reported engaging in behaviors related to transformational leadership, M = 3.15, more often than those related to transactional, M = 2.45, or laissez-faire leadership styles, M = 0.86

The literature on public sex environments spans a number of disciplines, including public health, queer geography, and urban planning. Ethnographic, spatial, and epidemiological approaches have predominated but heretofore few researchers have dedicated much attention to the actual plants that provide cover for sex as well as other non-conformist activity in urban green spaces. We draw on recent work in environmental history and political ecology which include non-human organisms as crucial and possibly agentic members of dynamic assemblages. We examine the flora of three urban green spaces—and their landscape—and argue that botanical control of public sex environments has long been and still is largely an attempt to control supposedly deviant sexualities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the use of the 'natural archive' (for instance, ice cores, pollen samples, dendrochronology) to supplement historians' traditional, documentary sources. It first explores the way insights from the archival turn have forced historians to interrogate not only their sources' provenance, but also the sources of those sources: the origins of the archives themselves. This critical approach to archives - looking at archives as objects of analysis - can be applied to archives assembled from natural specimens as well. I examine two examples of natural archives (herbaria and ice core collections) and show that they have subjectivities and social mediation similar to archives that contain paper records. The archival processes of acquisition, appraisal, ordering, and description (as well as deaccessioning) are all mediated by cultural concepts. I examine both herbarium specimens and ice cores to see how their creation and assembly into archives results not in an objective reflection of natural phenomena but rather in subjective assemblages. I conclude by appealing to historians to draw on these sources in an era in which the distinction between human history and natural history is collapsing, but to treat the provenance of 'natural' sources just as critically as that of documentary ones. By broadening the sources they use and thinking archivally about all of them, historians can avoid reifying the distinction between the natural and human worlds and confront the challenges of writing history in the Anthropocene. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent research on authenticity in food products has highlighted the importance of place. I use the example of wine called Chianti - once made in both central Italy and northern California - to reframe the discussion of how authenticity is constructed. I show that both versions of Chianti were dynamic, not stable, products that were the results of networks of capital, geographies of production, and consumer desires. I explain the transoceanic viniferous dialectic that involved consumers and producers, and the curious situation of an Italian wine that seemed authentic despite being made in California. This case suggests that rather than being based on geophysical variables or supposedly traditional production practices, authenticity can be constructed over time far from a good product's place of origin and using different authenticating symbols. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers the author's insights regarding the French term, terroir, the connection between place and taste that only a true connoisseur can perceive. He notes that believing that someone can taste the difference between two grapes grown apart is like believing in virgin birth. He suggests that people should let taste and nutrition decide on what is good to eat.

A letter to the editor is presented in response to the article "The Science of Biodynamic Viticulture" by Jason Tippetts in the 2012 issue, and the response of the author of the above mentioned article.