The Performance Culture of Burning Man

Theatre in the United States for the last twenty years has been evolving in scope by way of a cultural phenomenon known as Burning Man. In 2006, this festival attracted over forty thousand participants to the Black Rock Desert in Northwestern Nevada to a flat dusty Playa surrounded by mountain ranges. While the natural environment there is hostile, the creative atmosphere is welcoming and invites a broad scope of performative behaviors and genres to be exhibited there, the entire week the festival takes place. Make-shift stages and theme camps, as well as large-scale interactive art pieces play host to participants who dress up in fanciful costumes to perform in all manner of imagining. This dissertation maps out the cultural terrain of Burning Man in order to explain how performing there is form of identity-making and cultural commodity. As one of a handful of North American festivals which expressly discourage commercialism and commodification, theatricality takes the place of significance for entertainment and communication. Performance forms of all kinds historically are represented at Burning Man and this dissertation will investigate and theorize how a new performance culture has emerged from the festival itself and by its presence as a theatrical event, has exposed and expanded performance and theatre forms. This dissertation offers a critical framework through which to consider performance and performers within the Burning Man community as applied to Mikhail Bakhtin's concept of Carnival and the Schema for Theatrical Eventness proposed by the International Federation for Theatre Research Theatrical Events Working Group. The theories of Victor Turner, Baz Kershaw, and Michel Foucault are also presented in this dissertation to consider how performance occurs at Burning Man. Whether informal and spontaneous, interactive performing or rehearsed, staged formal performance, Burning Man provides an exciting lens through which to consider how new performance genres are emerging in a large-scale outdoor festival setting at the beginning of the twenty-first century in North America

Development of a bioactive glass fiber reinforced starch-polycaprolactone composite

For bone regeneration and repair, combinations of different materials are often needed. Biodegradable polymers are often combined with osteoconductive materials, such as bioactive glass (BaG), which can also improve the mechanical properties of the composite. The aim of this work was to develop and characterize BaG fiber reinforced starch–poly-ecaprolactone (SPCL) composite. Sheets of SPCL (30/70 wt %) were produced using singlescrew extrusion. They were then cut and compression-molded in layers with BaG fibers to form composite structures with different combinations. Mechanical and degradation properties of the composites were studied. The actual amount of BaG in the composites was determined using combustion tests. Initial mechanical properties of the reinforced composites were at least 50% better than the properties of the nonreinforced specimens. However, the mechanical properties of the composites after 2 weeks of hydrolysis were comparable to those of the nonreinforced samples. During the 6 weeks hydrolysis the mass of the composites had decreased only by about 5%. The amount of glass in the composites remained as initial for the 6-week period of hydrolysis. In conclusion, it is possible to enhance initial mechanical properties of SPCL by reinforcing it with BaG fibers. However, mechanical properties of the composites are typical for bone fillers and strength properties need to be further improved for allowing more demanding bone applications.Technology Development Center in Finland (TEKES); contract grant number: 90220.European Commission (European Union Project EXPER-TISSUES); contract grant number: NMP3-CT-2004-500328.Academy of Finland; contract grant number: 37726.The Ministry of Italian University (MIUR)-Rome, through the PRIN'06 prot. n. 2006038548 project; InterUniversity Consortium of Materials Science and Technology (INSTM), Florence, through the PRISMA'04 project

A comprehensive study on compositional and structural changes in 45S5 bioglass products exposed to simulated body fluid

The interaction of fully dense 45S5‐bioglass derived samples produced by Spark Plasma Sintering (SPS) with simulated body fluid (SBF) solution was investigated in detail taking advantage of the Rietveld refinement method to quantitatively evidence the corresponding microstructural and compositional changes. It is observed that, when the original amorphous nature is mostly (75 wt%) preserved in the material during sintering (550°C, 2 minutes), the resulting specimens dissolve faster and determine relatively higher pH increase and ions release in the SBF solution. Correspondingly, a relatively lower amount of hydroxycarbonate apatite (HCA) is formed on their surface. In contrast, a more extensive apatite layer with trabecular structure is generated within 3 days storage on the surface of fully crystallized samples obtained at 600°C by SPS, which only consists of Na–Ca silicate grains (20 nm). Moreover, as the sintering temperature and dwell time were increased to 700°C and 20 minutes, respectively, a rhenanite‐like phase was also formed (about 15 wt%), other than crystallites growth to 90 nm. Interestingly, the presence of rhenanite provides a beneficial contribution for the production of the HCA layer, which was found the largest for this system when considering storage periods of 7 and 14 days, respectively.Regione Autonoma della Sardegna (Italy). Grant Number: CUP n. F71J1100107000

Microstructural characterization and in vitro bioactivity of porous glass-ceramic scaffolds for bone regeneration by synchrotron radiation X-ray microtomography

One of the key purposes of bone tissue engineering is the development of new biomaterials that can stimulate the body's own regenerative mechanism for patient's anatomical and functional recovery. Bioactive glasses, due to their versatile properties, are excellent candidates to fabricate porous 3-D architectures for bone replacement. In this work, morphological and structural investigations are carried out on Bioglass\uae- and CEL2-derived scaffolds produced by sponge replication (CEL2 is an experimental glass developed at Politecnico di Torino). Synchrotron radiation X-ray microtomography is used to study the samples 3-D architecture, pores size, shape, distribution and interconnectivity, as well as the growth kinetics on scaffolds struts of a newly formed apatitic phase during in vitro treatment in simulated body fluid, in order to describe from a quantitative viewpoint the bioactive potential of the analyzed biomaterials. An accurate comparison between architectural features and bioactive behaviour of Bioglass\uae- and CEL2-derived scaffolds is presented and discussed

Toward Smart Implant Synthesis: Bonding Bioceramics of Different Resorbability to Match Bone Growth Rates

This work was partially funded by the European Union (Project MARMED - 2011-1/164), the Spanish Government and FEDER (CICYT MAT2006-10481) by Xunta de Galicia (CN2012/292)