‘Argue with us!’: audience co-creation through post-performance discussions.

In this article Caroline Heim explores an avenue for the audience's contribution to the theatrical event that has emerged as increasingly important over the past decade: postperformance discussions. With the exception of theatres that actively encourage argument such as the Staatstheater Stuttgart, most extant audience discussions in Western mainstream theatres privilege the voice of the theatre expert. Caroline Heim presents case studies of post-performance discussions held after performances of Anne of the Thousand Days and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? which trialled a new model of audience co-creation. An audience text which informs the theatrical event was created, and a new role, that of audience critic, established in the process.

Co-management to solve homelessness : wicked solutions to wicked problems

While governments are engaged in developing social policy responses to address wicked issues such as poverty, homelessness, drug addiction and crime, long term resolution of these issues through government policy making and state-based programmatic action has remained elusive. The use of vehicles for joint action and partnership between government and the community sector such as co-management has been offered as a way of harnessing productive capability and innovative capacity of both these sectors to resolve these complex problems. However, it is suggested that while there is a well advanced agenda with the intent for collaboration and partnership, working with the models for undertaking this joint action are not well understood and have not been fully developed or evaluated. This chapter examines new approaches to resolving the wicked issue of homelessness through applying the lens of co-management to understand the complexities of this issue and its resolution. The chapter analyses an attempt to move away from traditional bureaucratic structures of welfare departments, operating through single functional ‘silos’ to a new horizontal ‘hub-based’ model of service delivery that seeks to integrate actors across many different service areas and organizations. The chapter explores case studies of co-management in the establishment, development and operation of service hubs to address homelessness. We argue that the response to homelessness needs a ‘wicked solution’ that goes beyond simply providing shelter to those in need. The case of the hub models of community sector organizations working across organizational boundaries is evaluated to determine whether this approach can be considered successful co-managing of an innovative initiative, and understanding the requirements for developing, improving and extending this model. The role of the third sector in co-managing public services is examined through the in-depth case studies and the results are presented together with an assessment of how co-management can contribute to service quality and service management in public services.

Gold coating of silica and zinc oxide nanoparticles by the surface reduction of gold(I) chloride

The possibility of a surface inner sphere electron transfer mechanism leading to the coating of gold via the surface reduction of gold(I) chloride on metal and semi-metal oxide nanoparticles was investigated. Silica and zinc oxide nanoparticles are known to have very different surface chemistry, potentially leading to a new class of gold coated nanoparticles. Monodisperse silica nanoparticles were synthesised by the well known Stöber protocol in conjunction with sonication. The nanoparticle size was regulated solely by varying the amount of ammonia solution added. The presence of surface hydroxyl groups was investigated by liquid proton NMR. The resultant nanoparticle size was directly measured by the use of TEM. The synthesised silica nanoparticles were dispersed in acetonitrile (MeCN) and added to a bis acetonitrile gold(I) co-ordination complex [Au(MeCN)2]+ in MeCN. The silica hydroxyl groups were deprotonated in the presence of MeCN generating a formal negative charge on the siloxy groups. This allowed the [Au(MeCN)2]+ complex to undergo ligand exchange with the silica nanoparticles, which formed a surface co-ordination complex with reduction to gold(0), that proceeded by a surface inner sphere electron transfer mechanism. The residual [Au(MeCN)2]+ complex was allowed to react with water, disproportionating into gold(0) and gold(III) respectively, with gold(0) being added to the reduced gold already bound on the silica surface. The so-formed metallic gold seed surface was found to be suitable for the conventional reduction of gold(III) to gold(0) by ascorbic acid. This process generated a thin and uniform gold coating on the silica nanoparticles. This process was modified to include uniformly gold coated composite zinc oxide nanoparticles (Au@ZnO NPs) using surface co-ordination chemistry. AuCl dissolved in acetonitrile (MeCN) supplied chloride ions which were adsorbed onto ZnO NPs. The co-ordinated gold(I) was reduced on the ZnO surface to gold(0) by the inner sphere electron transfer mechanism. Addition of water disproportionated the remaining gold(I) to gold(0) and gold(III). Gold(0) bonded to gold(0) on the NP surface with gold(III) was reduced to gold(0) by ascorbic acid (ASC), which completed the gold coating process. This gold coating process of Au@ZnO NPs was modified to incorporate iodide instead of chloride. ZnO NPs were synthesised by the use of sodium oxide, zinc iodide and potassium iodide in refluxing basic ethanol with iodide controlling the presence of chemisorbed oxygen. These ZnO NPs were treated by the addition of gold(I) chloride dissolved in acetonitrile leaving chloride anions co-ordinated on the ZnO NP surface. This allowed acetonitrile ligands in the added [Au(MeCN)2]+ complex to surface exchange with adsorbed chloride from the dissolved AuCl on the ZnO NP surface. Gold(I) was then reduced by the surface inner sphere electron transfer mechanism. The presence of the reduced gold on the ZnO NPs allowed adsorption of iodide to generate a uniform deposition of gold onto the ZnO NP surface without the use of additional reducing agents or heat.

Design process excludes users : the co-creation activities between user and designer

User needs are a fundamental element of design. If the design process does not properly reflect user needs, the design will be severely compromised. Therefore, it is worthwhile to investigate how the user is, and user needs are, understood in the design process. In this article, three accepted linear process models for web site and interactive media design are reviewed in terms of the designer and user participation. The article then proposes a user-evolving collaborative design process which is built on co-creation activities between designer and user. Co-creation activities across the entire design process structurally and ontologically reposition the users, and user needs, centrally, which allows the designers to holistically approach to the user needs through building a partnership with the users. Co-creation creates an equal evolving participatory process between user and designer towards sharing values and knowledge and creating new domains of collective creativity.

A parallel cooperative co-evolutionary genetic algorithm for the composite SaaS placement problem in Cloud computing

A composite SaaS (Software as a Service) is a software that is comprised of several software components and data components. The composite SaaS placement problem is to determine where each of the components should be deployed in a cloud computing environment such that the performance of the composite SaaS is optimal. From the computational point of view, the composite SaaS placement problem is a large-scale combinatorial optimization problem. Thus, an Iterative Cooperative Co-evolutionary Genetic Algorithm (ICCGA) was proposed. The ICCGA can find reasonable quality of solutions. However, its computation time is noticeably slow. Aiming at improving the computation time, we propose an unsynchronized Parallel Cooperative Co-evolutionary Genetic Algorithm (PCCGA) in this paper. Experimental results have shown that the PCCGA not only has quicker computation time, but also generates better quality of solutions than the ICCGA.

Comparative study on adsorption of two cationic dyes by milled sugarcane bagasse

Adsorptions of Rhodamine B (RhB) and Basic Blue 9 (BB9, also known as methylene blue) by sugarcane bagasse of different surface areas were compared in this study. There was a small gain in the amount of dye removed by increasing bagasse surface area from 0.57 m2/g to 1.81 m2/g. BB9 adsorption was less sensitive to surface area change than RhB adsorption. Adsorption capacity of 250 mg/L RhB on 1 g/L bagasse was 65.5 mg/g compared to a value of 30.7 mg/g obtained with BB9 under the same conditions. Increasing adsorption temperature (from 30 °C to 50 °C) while having no effect on RhB adsorption, slightly decreased BB9 adsorption by ~4%. The differences in adsorption performances between these dyes have been related to the molecular structure of the dyes and the surface chemistry of bagasse.

Emergent innovation through the co-evolution of informal and formal media economies

Well-established distinctions between amateur and professional are blurring as the impact of social media, changes in cultural consumption, and crises in copyright industries’ business models are felt across society and economy. I call this the increasingly rapid co-evolution of the formal market and informal household sectors and analyse it through the concept of ‘social network markets’ – individual choices are made on the basis of other’s choices and such networked preferencing is enhanced by the growing ubiquity of social media platforms. This may allow us better to understand sources of disruption and innovation in audiovisual production and distribution in wealthy Western markets which are as significant as those posed by informal practices outside the West. I examine what is happening around the monetization and professionalization of online video (YouTube, for example) and the socialization of professional production strategies (transmedia, for example) as innovation from the margins.

Adsorption of heavy metals by road deposited solids

The research study discussed in the paper investigated the adsorption/desorption behaviour of heavy metals commonly deposited on urban road surfaces, namely, Zn, Cu, Cr and Pb for different particle size ranges of solids. The study outcomes, based on field studies and batch experiments confirmed that road deposited solids particles contain a significantly high amount of vacant charge sites with the potential to adsorb additional heavy metals. Kinetic study and adsorption experiments indicated that Cr is the most preferred metal element to associate with solids due to the relatively high electro negativity and high charge density of trivalent cation (Cr3+). However, the relatively low availability of Cr in the urban road environment could influence this behaviour. Comparing total adsorbed metals present in solids particles, it was found that Zn has the highest capacity for adsorption to solids. Desorption experiments confirmed that a low concentration of Cu, Cr and Pb in solids was present in water-soluble and exchangeable form, whilst a significant fraction of adsorbed Zn has a high likelihood of being released back into solution. Among heavy metals, Zn is considered to be the most commonly available metal among road surface pollutants.

Experimental evidence indicating that mastreviruses probably did not co-diverge with their hosts

Background. Despite the demonstration that geminiviruses, like many other single stranded DNA viruses, are evolving at rates similar to those of RNA viruses, a recent study has suggested that grass-infecting species in the genus Mastrevirus may have co-diverged with their hosts over millions of years. This "co-divergence hypothesis" requires that long-term mastrevirus substitution rates be at least 100,000-fold lower than their basal mutation rates and 10,000-fold lower than their observable short-term substitution rates. The credibility of this hypothesis, therefore, hinges on the testable claim that negative selection during mastrevirus evolution is so potent that it effectively purges 99.999% of all mutations that occur. Results. We have conducted long-term evolution experiments lasting between 6 and 32 years, where we have determined substitution rates of between 2 and 3 × 10 -4substitutions/site/year for the mastreviruses Maize streak virus (MSV) and Sugarcane streak Réunion virus (SSRV). We further show that mutation biases are similar for different geminivirus genera, suggesting that mutational processes that drive high basal mutation rates are conserved across the family. Rather than displaying signs of extremely severe negative selection as implied by the co-divergence hypothesis, our evolution experiments indicate that MSV and SSRV are predominantly evolving under neutral genetic drift. Conclusion. The absence of strong negative selection signals within our evolution experiments and the uniformly high geminivirus substitution rates that we and others have reported suggest that mastreviruses cannot have co-diverged with their hosts. © 2009 Harkins et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd.