CC & Government Guide : Using Creative Commons 2.5 Australia Licences on Government Copyright Materials

This guide explains how copyright law applies to Australian government material, how copyright can be managed to facilitate beneficial open access practices by government, how CC licences can be used to achieve open access to government material, and provides practical step-by-step guidance for agencies and their officers on licensing and use of government copyright materials under CC 2.5 Australia licences.

“Filling out the forms was a nightmare” : project evaluation and the reflective practitioner in community theatre in contemporary Northern Ireland

Since the Good Friday Agreement of 1998, large sums have been invested in community theatre projects in Northern Ireland, in the interests of conflict transformation and peace building. While this injection of funds has resulted in an unprecedented level of applied theatre activity, opportunities to maximise learning from this activity are being missed. It is generally assumed that project evaluation is undertaken at least partly to assess the degree of success of projects against important social objectives, with a view to learning what works, what does not, and what might work in the future. However, three ethnographic case studies of organisations delivering applied theatre projects in Northern Ireland indicate that current processes used to evaluate such projects are both flawed and inadequate for this purpose. Practitioners report that the administrative work involved in applying for and justifying funding is onerous, burdensome, and occurs at the expense of artistic activity. This is a very real concern when the time and effort devoted to ‘filling out the forms’ does not ultimately result in useful evaluative information. There are strong disincentives for organisations to report honestly on their experiences of difficulties, or undesirable impacts of projects, and this problem is not transcended by the use of external evaluators. Current evaluation processes provide little opportunity to capture unexpected benefits of projects, and small but significant successes which occur in the context of over-ambitious objectives. Little or no attempt is made to assess long-term impacts of projects on communities. Finally, official evaluation mechanisms fail to capture the reflective practice and dialogic analysis of practitioners, which would richly inform future projects. The authors argue that there is a need for clearer lines of communication, and more opportunities for mutual learning, among stakeholders involved in community development. In particular, greater involvement of the higher education sector in partnership with government and non-government agencies could yield significant benefits in terms of optimizing learning from applied theatre project evaluations.

Piezoelectric PVDF materials performance and operation limits in space environments

Piezoelectric polymers based on polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) are of interest for large aperture space-based telescopes. Dimensional adjustments of adaptive polymer films are achieved via charge deposition and require a detailed understanding of the piezoelectric material responses which are expected to suffer due to strong vacuum UV, gamma, X-ray, energetic particles and atomic oxygen under low earth orbit exposure conditions. The degradation of PVDF and its copolymers under various stress environments has been investigated. Initial radiation aging studies using gamma- and e-beam irradiation have shown complex material changes with significant crosslinking, lowered melting and Curie points (where observable), effects on crystallinity, but little influence on overall piezoelectric properties. Surprisingly, complex aging processes have also been observed in elevated temperature environments with annealing phenomena and cyclic stresses resulting in thermal depoling of domains. Overall materials performance appears to be governed by a combination of chemical and physical degradation processes. Molecular changes are primarily induced via radiative damage, and physical damage from temperature and AO exposure is evident as depoling and surface erosion. Major differences between individual copolymers have been observed providing feedback on material selection strategies.

Development and evaluation of hydrocarbon sorbent materials with the aid of chemometrics

Hydrocarbon spills on roads are a major safety concern for the driving public and can have severe cost impacts both on pavement maintenance and to the economy through disruption to services. The time taken to clean-up spills and re-open roads in a safe driving condition is an issue of increasing concern given traffic levels on major urban arterials. Thus, the primary aim of the research was to develop a sorbent material that facilitates rapid clean-up of road spills. The methodology involved extensive research into a range of materials (organic, inorganic and synthetic sorbents), comprehensive testing in the laboratory, scale-up and field, and product design (i.e. concept to prototype). The study also applied chemometrics to provide consistent, comparative methods of sorbent evaluation and performance. In addition, sorbent materials at every stage were compared against a commercial benchmark. For the first time, the impact of diesel on asphalt pavement has been quantified and assessed in a systematic way. Contrary to conventional thinking and anecdotal observations, the study determined that the action of diesel on asphalt was quite rapid (i.e. hours rather than weeks or months). This significant finding demonstrates the need to minimise the impact of hydrocarbon spills and the potential application of the sorbent option. To better understand the adsorption phenomenon, surface characterisation techniques were applied to selected sorbent materials (i.e. sand, organo-clay and cotton fibre). Brunauer Emmett Teller (BET) and thermal analysis indicated that the main adsorption mechanism for the sorbents occurred on the external surface of the material in the diffusion region (sand and organo-clay) and/or capillaries (cotton fibre). Using environmental scanning electron microscopy (ESEM), it was observed that adsorption by the interfibre capillaries contributed to the high uptake of hydrocarbons by the cotton fibre. Understanding the adsorption mechanism for these sorbents provided some guidance and scientific basis for the selection of materials. The study determined that non-woven cotton mats were ideal sorbent materials for clean-up of hydrocarbon spills. The prototype sorbent was found to perform significantly better than the commercial benchmark, displaying the following key properties: • superior hydrocarbon pick-up from the road pavement; • high hydrocarbon retention capacity under an applied load; • adequate field skid resistance post treatment; • functional and easy to use in the field (e.g. routine handling, transportation, application and recovery); • relatively inexpensive to produce due to the use of raw cotton fibre and simple production process; • environmentally friendly (e.g. renewable materials, non-toxic to environment and operators, and biodegradable); and • rapid response time (e.g. two minutes total clean-up time compared with thirty minutes for reference sorbents). The major outcomes of the research project include: a) development of a specifically designed sorbent material suitable for cleaning up hydrocarbon spills on roads; b) submission of patent application (serial number AU2005905850) for the prototype product; and c) preparation of Commercialisation Strategy to advance the sorbent product to the next phase (i.e. R&D to product commercialisation).