Envisaging change: Supporting grassroots efforts in Colombia with agonistic design processes

Design has become increasingly engaged with bringing about social change. Shifting domains and perspectives to conflict stricken contexts yield opportunities to explore emerging forms of design that enable the expression and articulation of difference in productive ways, which can contribute positively to efforts related to civic issues and struggles in urban settings from developing countries. We explore the recently developed notion of Adversarial Design to support the integration of diverging perspectives and grassroots voices in the design process. This paper presents the findings and design insights from our study with two grassroots organisations in Bogota, Colombia. We present three themes that expose ways in which conflict motivates bringing about change, the importance of the social and physical features of the urban landscape, and the way in which social change acts as catalyst for acquiring new knowledge. To finalise, we discuss two design areas and how design could be used to integrate dissimilar worldviews.

Polycarbonate based nonchemically amplified photoresists for extreme ultraviolet lithography

Some initial EUVL patterning results for polycarbonate based non-chemically amplified resists are presented. Without full optimization the developer a resolution of 60 nm line spaces could be obtained. With slight overexposure (1.4 × E0) 43.5 nm lines at a half pitch of 50 nm could be printed. At 2x E0 a 28.6 nm lines at a half pitch of 50 nm could be obtained with a LER that was just above expected for mask roughness. Upon being irradiated with EUV photons, these polymers undergo chain scission with the loss of carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide. The remaining photoproducts appear to be non-volatile under standard EUV irradiation conditions, but do exhibit increased solubility in developer compared to the unirradiated polymer. The sensitivity of the polymers to EUV light is related to their oxygen content and ways to increase the sensitivity of the polymers to 10 mJ cm-2 is discussed.

Management characteristics and the decision to internationalize : Exploration of exporters vs. non-exporters within the Chilean wine industry

The objective of this exploratory study was to identify the key factors that enhance and inhibit the export activities of wineries and identify differences between exporters and non-exporters. Based on data collected from Chilean wineries, the findings of this study suggest that the major constraints for non-exporters are the lack of financial resources, limited quantities of stocks for market expansion, management’s lack of knowledge and experience, and the high cost of travelling and participating in trade shows. In addition, the main international markets for Chilean wineries were not psychically close markets as has been found for Australian or other wine industries. For domestic market oriented wineries cellar door sales were an important source of revenue. Finally, the results show that managers have educational levels and international experience exceeding those of other comparable New World wineries.

Service delivery framework : an architectural strategy for next-generation service delivery in business network

The next-generation of service-oriented architecture (SOA) needs to scale for flexible service consumption, beyond organizational and application boundaries, into communities, ecosystems and business networks. In wider and, ultimately, global settings, new capabilities are needed so that business partners can efficiently and reliably enable, adapt and expose services. Those services can then be discovered, ordered, consumed, metered and paid for, through new applications and opportunities, driven by third-parties in the global “village”. This trend is already underway, in different ways, through different early adopter market segments. This paper proposes an architectural strategy for the provisioning and delivery of services in communities, ecosystems and business networks – a Service Delivery Framework (SDF). The SDF is intended to support multiple industries and deployments where a SOA platform is needed for collaborating partners and diverse consumers. Specifically, it is envisaged that the SDF allows providers to publish their services into network directories so that they can be repurposed, traded and consumed, and leveraging network utilities like B2B gateways and cloud hosting. To support these different facets of service delivery, the SDF extends the conventional service provider, service broker and service consumer of the Web Services Architecture to include service gateway, service hoster, service aggregator and service channel maker.

Diversified service provisioning in global business networks

Companies and their services are being increasingly exposed to global business networks and Internet-based ondemand services. Much of the focus is on flexible orchestration and consumption of services, beyond ownership and operational boundaries of services. However, ways in which third-parties in the “global village” can seamlessly self-create new offers out of existing services remains open. This paper proposes a framework for service provisioning in global business networks that allows an open-ended set of techniques for extending services through a rich, multi-tooling environment. The Service Provisioning Management Framework, as such, supports different modeling techniques, through supportive tools, allowing different parts of services to be integrated into new contexts. Integration of service user interfaces, business processes, operational interfaces and business object are supported. The integration specifications that arise from service extensions are uniformly reflected through a kernel technique, the Service Integration Technique. Thus, the framework preserves coherence of service provisioning tasks without constraining the modeling techniques needed for extending different aspects of services.

When digital native meets analogue reality : a case study of ICT skills in first year university students

Recently claims have been made that all universities will in coming decades merge to become just a few mega-institutions offering online degrees to the world. This assumes a degree of literacy with ICT (information and communication technology) amongst potential students, who are often regarded as 'digital natives'. Far from being digital natives, many students have considerable trouble using ICT beyond the ubiquitous Facebook. While some students are computer literate, a substantial proportion lack the skills to prosper under their own devices in an online tertiary education environment. For these students a blended learning experience is needed to develop skills to effectively interact in the virtual environment. This paper presents a case study that specifically examined the ICT capabilities of first-year university students enrolled in the School of Civil Engineering and the Built Environment at Queensland University of Technology (QUT). Empirical data are presented and curriculum strategies articulated to develop ICT skills in university undergraduates.

Building knowledge capabilities : an organisational learning approach

The communal nature of knowledge production predicts the importance of creating learning organisations where knowledge arises out of processes that are personal, social, situated and active. It follows that workplaces must provide both formal and informal learning opportunities for interaction with ideas and among individuals. This grounded theory for developing contemporary learning organisations harvests insights from the knowledge management, systems sciences, and educational learning literatures. The resultant hybrid theoretical framework informs practical application, as reported in a case study that harnesses the accelerated information exchange possibilities enabled through web 2.0 social networking and peer production technologies. Through complementary organisational processes, 'meaning making' is negotiated in formal face-to-face meetings supplemented by informal 'boundary spanning' dialogue. The organisational capacity building potential of this participatory and inclusive approach is illustrated through the example of the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Library in San Jose, California, USA. As an outcome of the strategic planning process at this joint city-university library, communication, decision-making, and planning structures, processes, and systems were re-invented. An enterprise- level redesign is presented, which fosters contextualising information interactions for knowledge sharing and community building. Knowledge management within this context envisions organisations as communities where knowledge, identity, and learning are situated. This framework acknowledges the social context of learning - i.e., that knowledge is acquired and understood through action, interaction, and sharing with others. It follows that social networks provide peer-to-peer enculturation through intentional exchange of tacit information made explicit. This, in turn, enables a dynamic process experienced as a continuous spiral that perpetually elevates collective understanding and enables knowledge creation.

Gradual training of cascaded shape regression for facial landmark localization and pose estimation

Facial landmarks play an important role in face recognition. They serve different steps of the recognition such as pose estimation, face alignment, and local feature extraction. Recently, cascaded shape regression has been proposed to accurately locate facial landmarks. A large number of weak regressors are cascaded in a sequence to fit face shapes to the correct landmark locations. In this paper, we propose to improve the method by applying gradual training. With this training, the regressors are not directly aimed to the true locations. The sequence instead is divided into successive parts each of which is aimed to intermediate targets between the initial and the true locations. We also investigate the incorporation of pose information in the cascaded model. The aim is to find out whether the model can be directly used to estimate head pose. Experiments on the Annotated Facial Landmarks in the Wild database have shown that the proposed method is able to improve the localization and give accurate estimates of pose.

Innovation in the road and bridge industry

This paper reviews innovation activity in a key service industry – road and bridge construction. Based on a large-scale Australian survey and descriptive statistics, the paper finds that there is little difference in innovation levels between different types of industry participants and that innovation is difficult to implement. The survey gathered responses from suppliers, consultants, contracts and clients and compared results across these four industry sectors. The absorptive capacity and relationship capacities of respondents were also investigated. One in five respondents had poor absorptive capacity. Suppliers were found to the most effective learners and were the best adopters of ideas from outside their organisations and consultants were the least effective. Australian construction organisations have relatively good relationship skills because relationship-based contracts are common compared to other countries. Indeed, the survey found that nearly 60% of respondents had experience with such contracts, with clients having more experience than the other three sectors. The results have implications for the measurement of innovation in project-based industries, and the relative roles of clients and suppliers in driving innovation in the construction industry. Further research will examine the extent to which particular governance mechanisms within relationship contracts lead to improved innovation and project performance.

Characterising the spatial dynamics of sympatric Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus populations in the Philippines

Entomological surveillance and control are essential to the management of dengue fever (DF). Hence, understanding the spatial and temporal patterns of DF vectors, Aedes (Stegomyia) aegypti (L.) and Ae. (Stegomyia) albopictus (Skuse), is paramount. In the Philippines, resources are limited and entomological surveillance and control are generally commenced during epidemics, when transmission is difficult to control. Recent improvements in spatial epidemiological tools and methods offer opportunities to explore more efficient DF surveillance and control solutions: however, there are few examples in the literature from resource-poor settings. The objectives of this study were to: (i) explore spatial patterns of Aedes populations and (ii) predict areas of high and low vector density to inform DF control in San Jose village, Muntinlupa city, Philippines. Fortnightly, adult female Aedes mosquitoes were collected from 50 double-sticky ovitraps (SOs) located in San Jose village for the period June-November 2011. Spatial clustering analysis was performed to identify high and low density clusters of Ae. aegypti and Ae. albopictus mosquitoes. Spatial autocorrelation was assessed by examination of semivariograms, and ordinary kriging was undertaken to create a smoothed surface of predicted vector density in the study area. Our results show that both Ae. aegypti and Ae. albopictus were present in San Jose village during the study period. However, one Aedes species was dominant in a given geographic area at a time, suggesting differing habitat preferences and interspecies competition between vectors. Density maps provide information to direct entomological control activities and advocate the development of geographically enhanced surveillance and control systems to improve DF management in the Philippines.

Two-photon fluorescence spectroscopy for identification of healthy and malignant biological tissues

Two-photon fluorescence spectroscopy has been performed on rat skeletal muscles to investigate the effect of fixation processes on the micro-environments of the endogenous fluorophors in rat skeletal muscles. The two-photon fluorescence spectra measured for different fixation periods show a differential among those samples that were fixed in water, formalin and methanol, respectively. The results imply that two-photon fluorescence spectroscopy can be a potential technique for identification of healthy and malignant biological tissues.

Víctimas de un experimento: Conflicto multicultural en el programa de oportunidades

This article presents a reflection of the application of multiculturality principles into tertiary educational programs at the University of Los Andes, Bogota Colombia. The main focus of this paper is debating the concept of 'positive discrimination' as a challenge taken by educational centres in societies with cultural diversity populations.

Beyond Bilbao : rethinking flagship cultural development and planning in three California cities

Since the widely publicized revitalization success story of the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, local governments have been scrambling to create their own flagship cultural projects. Because of the broad public sponsorship of such projects, urban planners need a full understanding of the associated potentials and problems. However, little research specifically examines the localized complexities of the flagship cultural strategy. Examining projects in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and San Jose, California, the article illustrates that much more than impressive architecture influences their catalytic ability. Flagship cultural projects are highly dependent on a variety of contextual factors and, therefore, should be positioned to build on existing arts and related commercial activity rather than gamble that they will generate new development from scratch.