bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
A mixed methods study on early childhood services' touchscreen tablet use and non-use in New Zealand
Authors:   , Santamaria Michael Luke
Published: December 2021

With the ongoing debate on young children’s Information Communication Technology (ICT) use in early childhood education (ECE), empirical studies have reported that the increase in young children’s access to and use of touchscreen tablets, hereafter referred to as tablets, could positively and negatively impact their learning and development. According to the New Zealand ECE curriculum, Te Whāriki (Ministry of Education, 2017), children growing up in the context of a changing society could benefit from using technology. This research, which explored tablet use in New Zealand’s four major early childhood service types: education and care centres, home-based services, kindergartens, and playcentres, provides useful information on the reasons why services used and did not use tablets as well as how teachers/educators used tablets to support children’s learning.  The two phases to this sequential explanatory mixed methods study were underpinned by two research paradigms, the postpositivist paradigm for the quantitative phase and the constructivist paradigm for the qualitative phase. First, a national survey that was sent to all early childhood providers from the four major service types and then a collective case study was conducted in two sub-phases. Phase 2A consisted of focus group interviews with a tablet non-user service from each of the four service types and a tablet user service from each of the four service types. Phase 2B consisted of stimulated recall (SR) focus group interviews with the same tablet users who participated in Phase 2A.  The survey responses revealed considerable variation in the use of tablets and the purposes for which tablets were used. More education and care services and kindergartens used tablets than home-based services and playcentres. Both quantitative and qualitative phases revealed complexities involving tablet use such as the types of scaffolding used and issues surrounding screen time and policies on tablet use including the use of personally-owned tablets and cybsersafety concerns. Particularly, the findings from Phase 2 confirmed that the socialized nature involving tablet use aligned with Te Whāriki. Thus, tablet use is not necessarily limited to a dichotomy of use and non-use but is spread across a spectrum ranging from limited, to specialised, and to comprehensive use.
Bringing life to leadership: The emergence of principal leadership practice for educational success in low socio-economic schools
Authors:   , Millar Angela Blanche Anna-Lise
Published: December 2021

The persistent educational achievement gap and historically haphazard nature of progress for students in impoverished contexts in New Zealand primary schools is a deep-seated problem needing urgent attention. This multifaceted and interconnected problem has no distinct origin and no clear solution and is continuing to harm individual and collective futures. This thesis explores principal leadership practice and how it intersects with the low socio-economic context, to improve outcomes for vulnerable students.  Using a case study approach, two principals and their schools are holistically described using a theoretical framework grounded in complexity theory. Both the approach and theory uniquely explores principal practice as an individual and collective phenomenon, as a living, evolving network of self-organisation where both parts and wholes are significant, and as practice grounded in context.  The theory also offers a unique way to arrange and interpret findings. The study findings identified local notions of educational success as a way of understanding the trajectory of the ecosystem whole. The broad principal leadership patterns of practice included: building the network; integrating multiple perspectives; facilitating cohesion; and confronting and addressing injustices. These patterns evidenced a tight coupling between theory and practice. In the spirit of complexity theory, principal leadership practice is additionally explained as a sum greater than its parts. The capability of the network is described through concepts of stability and flow and shows, that no matter how competent the principal leader and their network, the contribution to education reform grapples to be transformational.  Recommendations are made for principal leaders, professional development providers, as well as the Ministry of Education and policymakers that offer hope and contribute to disrupting the current trajectory, so transformational change is more likely. Areas of instability and important leverage points, include professional learning and development, community-school connections and resourcing.
Confinement Properties of the 3D Topological Insulators Bi₂Se₃, Bi₂Te₃, and Sb₂Te₃
Authors:   , Kotulla Markus
Published: December 2021

Recent discoveries have spurred the theoretical prediction and experimental realization of novel materials that have topological properties arising from band inversion. Such topological insulators have conductive surface or edge states but are insulating in the bulk. How the signatures of topological behavior evolve when the system size is reduced is noteworthy from both a fundamental and an application-oriented point of view, as such understanding may form the basis for tailoring systems to be in specific topological phases. This thesis investigates the softly confined topological insulator family of Bi₂Se₃ and its properties when subjected to an in-plane magnetic field. The model system provides a useful platform for systematic study of the transition between the normal and the topological phases, including the development of band inversion and the formation of massless-Dirac-fermion surface states. The effects of bare size quantization, two-dimensional-subband mixing, and electron-hole asymmetry are disentangled and their corresponding physical consequences elucidated.  When a magnetic field is present, it is found that the Dirac cone which is formed in surface states, splits into two cones separated in momentum space and that these cones exhibit properties of Weyl fermions. The effective Zeeman splitting is much larger for the surface states than for the bulk states. Furthermore, the g-factor of the surface states depends on the size of the material. The mathematical model presented here may be realizable experimentally in the frame of optical lattices in ultra cold atom gases.
Mathematical Modelling of Blood Flow in Arteries
Authors:   , Peach Elijah
Published: December 2021

Herein contained is an exploration into mathematical modelling pertaining to blood flow in arteries. Previous models are considered as well as a new model derived. Some properties of these new models are investigated. They hold similarities with models from other physically significant systems, namely the KdV/BBM equations used for the modelling of water flow.
Click off: How digital has disrupted New Zealand sports journalism
Authors:   , Stutchbury Greg Michael
Published: December 2021

This thesis examined through a political economy framework how New Zealand’s two largest newspaper chains, Fairfax and NZME, have been impacted by the advent of digital technologies and the effects these have had on the practice of sports journalism. Digital technology, falling revenue and increasing pressure from financial owners have all played a part in the restructuring of both Fairfax and NZME’s editorial news operations, especially in the last five years as both companies transitioned to a ‘digital-first’ environment.  Semi-structured, in-depth interviews were conducted with 16 senior journalists who had knowledge of the transition from a print to a digital focus. These interviews highlighted the strategies adopted by both companies as they faced a challenging and evolving marketplace. They also underlined the internal tensions within newsrooms between not only journalists and editorial news managers but also the digital and print operations.  Despite the belief that digital technologies would make the print news media more collaborative and provide greater diversity and plurality, the opposite has occurred. Sports reporting remains highly routinised, coverage diversity is shrinking, and greater control is now exerted by editorial managers over the production of journalistic content. Digital technologies have also impacted the forms of content, with decision making on editorial content and resourcing now strongly influenced by data analytics, although there was still strong resistance to greater interactivity with readers. The relationship between sports organisations and print news media organisations, while considered in theory to be a symbiotic one but in reality, is an area of conflict, has also further deteriorated as sports organisations introduce significantly greater control over the media agenda. An element of this control has also heightened tensions with sports organisations moving into the digital space and competing directly with print news media organisations.
The motivation of the Chinese post-90s generation for travelling abroad
Authors:   , Cao Xinyue
Published: December 2021

There is well-documented research on tourism motivation in tourism literature. But till now, there is limited research of tourist motivation on Chinese youth travel group, who is so-called the Chinese post-90s generation. They are unique compared to other generations in China and has gradually been a group that received great public attention. Their thoughts and behaviours are bearing the brand of the Chinese era and also showing the characteristics of the modern Chinese generation. Therefore, this study based on the Chinese social background investigates Chinese youth tourists’ motivation for travelling abroad, focusing on the Chinese post-90s generation. In this study, a questionnaire survey was conducted among Chinese post-90s generation who came from major cities in China and had at least one or more overseas experiences. The research finds that the important motivational factors influencing the Chinese post-90s generation’s overseas travel include: self-development and relationship; novelty; escape and relaxation. Besides, this research finds that social variables which reflect China’s social changes have significant impacts on the Chinese youth tourists’ overseas travel motivation. These findings not only complement the deficiencies of the existing research on the tourist motivation of Chinese travellers but also provide important reference about Chinese youth tourism for tourism marketers and stakeholders who will deal with this potential tourism market.
Timing and Mechanisms of Silicate Differentiation and Basalt Magma Generation on the Howardite-Eucrite-Diogenite Asteroid Parent Body
Authors:   , Dallas Jessica Anne
Published: December 2021

Meteorites provide the only direct record of the chronology and nature of the processes that occurred in the early solar system. In this study, meteorites were examined in order to gain insight into the timing and nature of magmatism and silicate differentiation on asteroidal bodies in the first few million years of the solar system. These bodies are considered the precursors to terrestrial planets, and as such they provide information about conditions in the solar system at the time of planet formation. This study focuses on eucrites, which are basaltic meteorites that are believed to represent the crust of the Howardite-Eucrite-Diogenite (HED) parent body. The processes of silicate differentiation and the relationship between eucrites and the diogenitic mafic cumulate of the HED parent body are poorly understood. The major and trace element chemistry of the minerals in the eucrite suite was measured. There is little variability in mineral major element concentrations in eucrites, however considerable variability was observed in mineral trace element concentrations, particularly with respect to incompatible elements in the mineral phases. Magnesium was separated from digested eucrite samples, and the Mg isotope composition of the eucrites was measured to high precision in order to date the samples using the short-lived ²⁶Al–²⁶Mg chronometer and examine magmatic evolution on the HED parent body. Correlations between incompatible elements in pyroxene and ²⁶Mg anomalies, produced by the decay of ²⁶Al, indicate that the eucrite suite was formed from a single, evolving magma body. Large trace element and Mg isotopic differences between eucrites and diogenites indicate that the two meteorite groups did not, as previously suggested, originate from the same magma body. Instead they may have formed from two large magma bodies, which were spatially or temporally separated on the HED parent body. The application of the short-lived ²⁶Al–²⁶Mg chronometer to this suite of eucrites constrains the onset of eucrite formation to ~3 Myr after the formation of the solar system’s first solids, as a result of rapid accretion and melting of planetesimals due to heating from the decay of ²⁶Al.
The Early Childhood Curriculum (2009) In Vietnam: Tensions In The First Three Years Of Implementation
Authors:   , Dinh Doan-Huong Thi
Published: December 2021

In 2009 the Vietnamese Government introduced the new Early Childhood Curriculum (ECC) to replace the Reformed Early Childhood Curriculum (RECC) that was in place between 1994 and 2009. The ECC presents a new image of the child as an agentic, competent, and self-directed learner for a globalised society. Recent research on the implementation of the ECC has focused on the teachers‘ reconceptualising of traditional ways of teaching to meet new official aspirations without acknowledging teachers‘ perceptions of intrinsic valued concepts within both the RECC and the ECC. In addition, there has been limited investigation of how this implementation has been carried out in practice. This study fills these gaps by investigating how teachers are experiencing the transition from the RECC to the ECC. A mixed-method approach was used, which involved a questionnaire sent to 472 respondent teachers followed by an in-depth exploration of six case-study teachers‘ experiences in three early childhood education centres. Data was interpreted using a socio-cultural approach and informed by the principles from Social Reconstruction ideology, which views education as a cultural, political and social tool to foster changes in society (Schiro, 2008).  The study revealed that the teachers held dichotomous beliefs about the valued concepts in the ECC and used conflicting approaches within their theories of practice as they implemented the new curriculum. Teachers‘ age, qualification, and working position appeared to be significantly related to their implementation of the ECC in their early childhood centre. In addition, the study found the partnership between teachers and parents was not a strong one in jointly realising the Government‘s aspirations of preparing young children for life-long learning and holistic development. Hybrid forms of teaching practice emerged, illustrating the tensions for teachers created by the incompatibilities between the ideal and the reality as the implementation of the Western educational ideology in the ECC encountered deeply embedded Vietnamese cultural concepts. This study argues that despite teachers‘ acceptance of the aspirations of the ECC, traditional cultural concepts — including an emphasis on academic education, a traditional concept of collectivism and an ingrained social hierarchy — acted to create tensions, as well as challenges, for teachers who found themselves caught between the ideals of the new curriculum and the constraints placed upon them by their traditional working culture. Additionally, professional development for teachers and administrators were found to be a significant factor that either facilitated or reduced the tensions. Implications of how to improve the implementation of the ECC are presented.
Dallah: the death knell for deference?
Authors:   , Fraser Anastasia Lee
Published: December 2021

This paper examines the decision of the United Kingdom Supreme Court in Dallah Real Estate and Tourism Holding Company v The Minister of Religious Affairs, Government of Pakistan, a rare case where an English court refused enforcement of an international arbitral award under the United Nations Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards (the New York Convention).  Although in Dallah the United Kingdom Supreme Court acknowledged the trend to limit reconsideration of the findings of arbitral tribunals in fact and in law, the Court considered it was bound to decide the question of validity de novo. Contrary to the tribunal, the Court held the arbitration agreement was not valid under the law to which it was subject and refused enforcement of the arbitral award.  This paper analyses how the English Supreme Court decided the legal issues before it. It concludes the English court could have reached the same decision on a more convincing basis. Even where the issue is initial consent, holding the court at the place of enforcement is always bound to decide a matter de novo neither serves the objectives of international commercial arbitration nor is necessary to promote the fundamental integrity of arbitral proceedings.
Acculturating Architectural Sublimity: Experimenting with themes of Japanese experientiality within New Zealand housing
Authors:   , Picot Rachael Elisabeth Victoria
Published: December 2021

It has been argued that domestic architecture within New Zealand is increasingly dominated by international styles since the rise of modernism. According to Bill Wilson (the Group’s leader), there is a lack of understanding of foreign design principle within New Zealand modernist architecture, denying any psychological or spiritual connection within the home. This has caused a shift from what was considered a vernacular architecture to a hybrid of adopted building styles, imitated largely for their aesthetic value rather than any theoretical grounding. In New Zealand, a lack of national identity or sense of belonging within a home is said to be problematic. This thesis aims to help redefine a national vernacular and the experience of domestic space through the implementation of experientiality.  The design reconsiders domestic spaces through design-research methodologies derived from two early modernist architectural groups: the Bunriha (co-founded in 1920) with the locality of Auckland’s the Group (established in 1946). These were chosen as both groups provided manifestos for reviving each respective nation’s architecture (Japan and New Zealand) post war. The Group’s work is based purely on functionalism and economically viable solutions. It will provide the basis of architectural thought for the exploration of multiple design strategies within this thesis. While the Bunriha’s ideas are utilised for their experiential approach to modernist architecture. As The Groups’ Japanese equivalent, the Bunriha provides a successful precedent for mediating between new technology, experientiality and a vernacular style. The Bunriha’s design methodologies are extracted and appropriated to the Group’s vision for New Zealand modernism through multiple case study houses. The aim here is to introduce a new dimension of domestic architecture within specific sites chosen within Auckland. This intends to strengthen the relationships between inhabitant, home and landscape through several explorations.  The research led design results from a series of architectural strategies that respond to six design theories of shadow, reflection, permeability, materiality, interior/exterior relationship and construction. The first three are derived from the intangible considerations of Japan’s Bunriha, while the remaining respond to the tangible considerations of the Group. This is intended to transcend the preconceptions of a contemporary home through the reconsideration of intangible qualities and their value. It is proposed that this strategy will result in a heightened sense of self through the foreign concept of experientialism. The split between the different members of the Group meant a discontinuation of their early explorations of intangible qualities of space within a vernacular architecture. A continuation of their work will be intended through this thesis work.
The Edge of Public Amenity
Authors:   , Takizawa Ken
Published: December 2021

We have the techniques to design smaller and more efficient apartments, but those small apartments are often less attractive than their suburban alternatives. Some of the most attractive suburban houses are adjacent to significant natural public amenities, like beaches and parks, which gives the occupants convenient access to these public amenities. Valuable waterfront houses, for example, often open directly onto the beach. Houses adjacent to the town belt in Wellington often have direct access to these natural environments. While some small apartments can also have high value when adjacent to public amenities, they seldom have direct access to interior public amenities. What opportunities are there to making apartments more attractive by providing a shared interior public space directly accessible from the apartments door step? What is the interior equivalent of a beach front house? This project explores the possibility of setting apartment’s directly adjacent to interior public amenities like a gallery space, giving occupants privilege access to these spaces. With a growing urban population, our cities can either become denser or sprawl. The latter is not a positive outcome. Cities with limited access to land often handle density better since it is an urgent issue while others do not face these issues the same way but it is a reality. There are many benefits to living in the city; however we require places for recreation such as public amenities like the beaches and parks. Distinctively they are an escape from the built environment where there is a growing demand for density. Apartments are the norm in inner city living and they do not have relative proximity to these public amenities. Interiors also can be public amenities and there is an opportunity to bring these interior public amenities into the apartment. This opportunity could well improve the quality of apartment interiors because of this new adjacency to a public interior amenity. There are many examples of flexible designs but all are individual cases, such as the building in which Gary Chang lives. It is a small 32m² apartment known as a domestic transformer because of its sliding walls. Out of the hundreds of similar sized apartments, none is as flexible as Chang’s apartment. Typical apartments have a systematic problem of cramping more space at the cost a spatial configuration. Furthermore apartments rarely have any significant interior spaces that are adjacent to them.
Fair Trade for Whom? The Contribution of Fair Trade to Combatting Trade Inequities Faced by East Timorese Coffee Producers
Authors:   , Howson Kelle
Published: December 2021

Fair trade aims to empower smallholder agricultural producers in the global South to gain more power over their industries by the formation of transparent and democratically representative cooperatives. However, critiques of the fair trade system have emerged in ethical consumption literature, and pockets suggest that individual producer contexts have more of a role to play in determining the benefits of fair trade than had been previously understood or addressed. This work constitutes a case study designed to examine implementation and practice anomalies within the Timorese fair trade certified coffee industry, and the ways in which they impact on producers’ livelihoods and development. A mixed methods approach is deployed to analyse the coffee cooperative Cooperativa Café Timor, and the producers who sell to it. It finds the cooperative to be subject to a number of external pressures that prevent it from passing on the benefits of fair trade certification to farmers. Governance practices in terms of transparency and grassroots representation are found to be significantly hindered by reliance on outside organisations for market access. Also, producers are found to remain superficially represented within commodity chains; having little or no access to value-added income. The involvement of American private enterprise within the East Timorese fair trade system has served to distance the fair trade cooperative from its grassroots, and acts as somewhat of a barrier to democratic management, participatory decision-making, and the realisation of the objectives of fair trade.
The Future of Science Teacher Education in Tonga
Authors:   , Vaka-Vivili Margaret Kuira
Published: December 2021

The purpose of this research was to explore and document existing policy and practices contributing to the debate of science teacher education in the Pacific. The study took on a pragmatic approach for a mixed research, drawing from the positives of both the qualitative and the quantitative approaches using the kakala/kakala research frameworks guiding the methodological framework.   Being a mixed research, the data collection method involved three elements: one-on-one semi-structured interviews with senior Tongan education officials, document analysis and a teacher questionnaire targeting science teachers. All the interviews were conducted in English and recorded using a digital recording device and transcribed by myself as the researcher. All the science teachers who participated in the questionnaire returned a signed consent form to confirm willingness to participate maintaining anonymity.   In order to answer the research question, the study examined the significance of the fibre (fau)used in the kakala weaving process, extracting from the Kakala/Kakala research frameworks the metaphoric conceptual relevance of the fibre (fau) which holds the kakala providing it structural support. Hence the conceptualisation that, the three strands of fibre that holds and maintains the education system in Tonga can be attributed to;   (i) strong cultural values, (ii) a clear and definitive education policy framework (Catherwood & Levine, 2004), and high teacher self-efficacy. The self-efficacy of Tongan science teachers is measured for the first time and reported in this study as high to very high on a Likert-type psychometric scale adapted from (Skaalvik & Skaalvik, 2009) to fit the Tongan context. The study also discusses challenges and teacher perceptions of being a science teacher in Tonga and the implications these challenges might pose in future.
Exploring the paradoxes of addressing sustainability in commercial research: A study of scientist views
Authors:   , Ashby Mary
Published: December 2021

Research scientists increasingly engage in commercial research as well as face the need to address sustainability by taking into account the social, environmental and economic consequences of development activities. This role often entails addressing contradictory imperatives. Though paradox has pervasive effects on science work and managing for sustainability, it remains underexplored in these contexts. This research is positioned at the novel intersection of three bodies of work: sustainability in the context of science work, commercial research, and paradox in management and organisation. It engages a sensemaking perspective to examine the experiences of research scientists with managing sustainability in commercial research and explicates the tensions they perceive, as well as the ways in which they respond to them.  The study is primarily based on a set of 44 semi-structured interviews conducted with research scientists across four Crown Research Institutes in New Zealand. It offers two sets of findings. First, it identifies three main paradoxes research scientists perceive and elucidates their dynamics. These include the paradoxes of service ethos, role identity, and professional integrity. Second, it explicates perceived responses to these paradoxes, both constraining and productive. The former comprise the practices of opposing, isolating, over-committing, and suppressing. The latter, productive responses, consist of a range of management tactics premised on differentiation or integration. Differentiation tactics include diversification in scope of services, variation in work organisation and responsibilities, and incrementalism. Integration tactics used with external parties comprise identifying financial synergies between public and commercial projects, (re)framing problems and solutions for clients, (re)positioning across roles and identities, as well as harnessing economies of scope by co-authoring with clients.  This research contributes to the literature on research management by casting the emphasis on perceived paradoxes to be navigated when addressing sustainability in commercial research. It also offers a secondary contribution to the literature on paradox in management by contextualising organisational paradoxes and their management in science work. Specifically, it provides new insight into the ways by which scientists’ engagement with sustainability cuts across ethos and shapes their views on professional integrity. It also contributes to a nuanced understanding of role identity by focusing on the tensions research scientists at Crown Research Institutes experience in the dual role of advocates of change towards sustainability and allies of business. Altogether, this work extends existing organisational research by offering insights into scientists’ experience of paradox and its management when engaging with sustainability in commercial research.
Active Investment: Evaluating the Benefits and Costs of Investing in Active Travel in the Urban New Zealand Context
Authors:   , Grams Mark
Published: December 2021

Increased uptake of active travel is widely acknowledged to promote improved health, environmental and community outcomes. Although active travel participation rates in New Zealand compare favourably to other Anglo-Saxon countries, many northern European countries report active travel rates that are many fold higher.  In response to declining rates of active travel across New Zealand, the New Zealand Transport Agency created the Model Communities Programme. The goal of this programme was to boost walking and cycling rates in two demonstration cities, Hastings and New Plymouth, by improving walking and cycling infrastructure, as well as funding promotional and educational initiatives.  This study evaluates the effectiveness of the Model Communities Programme. This evaluation includes a quantitative appraisal in the form of a cost-benefit analysis. In addition to evaluating the economic efficiency of the programme, this study provides qualitative analysis derived from user intercept surveys and interviews with district council project managers to further assess the effectiveness of the intervention.  This study has found the Model Communities Programme to be cost-beneficial under several evaluative frameworks. In addition to this, the qualitative analysis has also presented largely positive feedback from both users and project managers. This study concludes that the Model Communities Programme has indeed boosted active travel in the demonstration cities, and that similar interventions are likely to be effective at promoting active travel across urban New Zealand.
Towards human and nature reconciliation: a Māori worldview approach to ecological landscape architecture.
Authors:   , Fau Tavete Faimau
Published: December 2021

This research explores how applying Māori worldview principles can reconcile and allow mutualism between people and ecologies within the post industrial urban setting of Wellington wharf. The aim of this thesis is to develop three possible solutions to reconcile people with ecologies and allow for mutual benefits within natural ecologies of the intertidal zone below Wellington wharf.  This research explores how a nonconventional ecological approach that includes human interaction in restorative landscape design can create beneficial interactions between humans and microorganisms.
The Pedestrian's Office Building
Authors:   , Redwood Zoe
Published: December 2021

According to urban theorist Jan Gehl (2004), Wellington’s central business district (CBD) lacks pedestrian vibrancy. Gehl identifies impermeability, caused by many large footprint commercial buildings with closed street frontages and privatised ground floors, as the main weakness in the city’s urban fabric . This thesis seeks to address Gehl’s findings that commercial buildings create a sterile pedestrian environment because of their disengaged street frontages, lack of programmatic diversity and negative impact on the connectivity of the pedestrian network.  A current lack of high end commercial office buildings in Wellington’s CBD creates an architectural opportunity to reconsider the way in which office buildings are integrated into the urban environment. In this thesis the office building is used as a tool to realistically investigate how these new buildings can address the urban issues raised by Gehl, and enhance the pedestrian experience.  This research uses the design principles in Nan Ellin’s Integral Urbanism to find a solution for the urban problems identified by Gehl. Three architectural and urban principles are used as devices to integrate the vertical office tower into the horizontal streetscape; hybridity, porosity and connectivity. This design proposition investigates an office building on the corner of Jervois Quay and Willeston Street in the Wellington CBD. This site is identified as a particularly weak area of the urban fabric challenged by a disconnection from the nearby waterfront; by the six lane highway, Jervois Quay.  The site-specific problem combined with the challenges of the market driven Wellington office typology is explored through an iterative design process to create a commercially feasible, site-specific design solution. Ultimately this research found that through applying urban design principles, office towers can better integrate into the urban environment to create a more pedestrian orientated city.
A Tale of Place
Authors:   , Edwards Jazmyn
Published: December 2021

The purpose of this research is to develop a cultural centre for Paraparaumu College that will aim to counter the number of students leaving school without any formal qualifications. The need for such a centre, with particular reference to Māori, was identified with the publishing of the 2013 census, which saw a third of Māori aged 15 years and over make up this demographic. While this number has decreased in comparison to earlier census results, this percentage still sits high above the national average.  From the standpoint of Māori, the reason for this statistic has been speculated by many theorists claiming Māori disconnection from their ancestral roots and the assimilation into European culture as a potential cause. Yet, while the Māori arts and language have declined in terms of common practice, the prevalence of western society is an aspect of life that modern-day youth have become accustomed to.  Therefore, it is proposed that the medium of interior architecture can serve as a tool to explore the notion of culture and identity in the built environment. While the success of Māori students is of particular interest to this investigation, the issues outlined are not exclusive to this cultural group. As such, this research will seek to generate a physical form that will pay homage to the unique blend of cultures that make up the Kapiti region as a means to anchor the building to its environment. Additionally, as a nation of people who have travelled to this land, the overarching theme of journey will serve as the basis with which the subject of identity in architecture will be explored. It is hoped that by establishing a strong sense of identity this will service the student in a way that a standardised education system may fail.
Gardening Mt Vic
Authors:   , Pearce William
Published: December 2021

Since Olmstead envisioned Central Park, New York, the study of gardening has slowly become the Staple of landscape historians. Gardening practices can engage the body with aesthetic experience through plants and materiality; landscape architects inform this process through expressive design intention and representations informed by conventions. When a creative drawing convention lacks sensitivity to how one reads the landscape, the intentions behind the expressions created by landscape architects become obscure or unclear.  John Ward, a New Zealand Company secretary, stated that Wellington’s town belt was for “the beautiful appearance of the city to be secured.” (Cook, 1992) Over time, urban infrastructural developments have altered the boundaries of town belt parks; This was the case for Mount Victoria Park due to the 1930s development of Alexandra Road.  Landscape architects recognise the significance of walking along the ridge of Mount Victoria because of its meaningful history; however, the large scale of the Mount Victoria Park means common planning practices cannot meaningfully engage with important opportunities for how its spatial compositions can dynamically affect the human experience. This is because landscape-planning tendencies typically utilise large-scale mapping to create utilitarian maintenance regimes that regiment spaces, rather than utilising landscape architectural principles in the forming of them.  This design research investigation asks: how can landscape architecture establish a meaningful, human-scale experience of the garden at the scale of the large park?  This study operates through design-led landscape architectural research. Site study of the Wellington Town Belt revealed that despite the scale of this site its variety of trails and open spaces for experiencing the site as a composed garden. This thesis argues that visual factors that enable composition focussed drawings to be meaningful can also be applied to the design of large-scale garden parks.  Reflection on fieldwork was developed in design through crafted explorations of technique and convention resulting in a composition focussed drawing system. These designs were developed through a sensitivity to scale and drawing convention. The creative use of representation and site interpretation challenged utilitarian conceptions about the design of large-scale town belts to also include human-scale iterative visual interpretation. The results of these design experiments unified spaces and formed intense moments of beauty and meaning, during both movement and points of pause, resulting in a garden-like experience that expressed the particular beauty and unique attributes of Matairangi, Mt Victoria.
Exploring the Molecular Mechanisms of Action of Samoan Medicinal Plants via Chemical Genetic Analyses
Authors:   , Molimau-Samasoni Seeseei
Published: December 2021

Natural products are a robust source of drug leads, and medicinal plants have been the source of natural products that are important pharmaceuticals in modern medicine. Samoan medicinal plants have been investigated in the past, but their potential as a source of new drug leads has not been realized. I hypothesized that determining the mechanism of action of Samoan medicinal plant extracts would provide insight into their pharmaceutical potential. The work described herein was carried out on 11 Samoan medicinal plants, from which 22 extracts were prepared. A bioactivity rate of 68% was determined when 15 of the 22 extracts inhibited the growth of yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae). The medicinal plant Psychotria insularum was the most potent, thus genome-wide analyses were completed using the haploid deletion mutant library of S. cerevisiae. Yeast strains deficient in iron transport were hypersensitive to the P. insularum aqueous extract. Further investigations showed that exogenous iron supplementation rescued the growth defect induced by P. insularum extracts, suggesting that P. insularum reduced intracellular iron. Fittingly, yeast cells treated with P. insularum extracts contained less intracellular iron than control cells. Paraxodically, the expression levels of iron transporter proteins were upregulated upon extract treatment. When we investigated iron-requiring cellular processes, we found that yeast cells treated with P. insularum extracts exhibited a respiratory deficient phenotype and reduced heme synthesis, indicative of an impaired cellular iron status. These findings suggested that P. insularum reduced bioavailable iron leading to the induction of the low iron response, and indeed the extracts of P. insularum were shown to chelate iron via the iron-chelating CAS assay. To translate results from yeast to mammalian cells, we treated primary murine macrophages with P. insularum extracts and detected an anti-inflammatory response, which we found to correlate with reduced activity of the iron-requiring aconitase enzyme. We further determined using pooled diploid mutant genetic analyses that the extracts of P. insularum did not have a genetic target. To identify the compound mediating the iron chelation mechanism, bioassay-guided isolation was conducted. Fractionation of the crude aqueous extract of P. insularum produced a relatively pure fraction that NMR and the acid-butanol assay identified as a condensed tannin. Together, these results indicate a relationship between iron chelation, a condensed tannin and inflammation. Further, we established an iron chelation mechanism of action by which P. insularum extracts are used to treat inflammation-associated symptoms in traditional Samoan medicine. Lastly, the findings presented here substantiate the reliability of plants with ethnobotanical background as sources for bioactive natural products.
Discontinuity: A compositional approach to the dynamic decoupling of gesture and sound in live performance
Authors:   , Jackson Marcus
Published: December 2021

The gestural-sonorous object, as described by Rolf Inge Godøy, has experienced a gradual aesthetic splitting in New Music practices. The notion that physical gesture relates to sounding result in a linear, cause-and-effect fashion can no longer be taken as a pre-condition in the study of compositional thought, as New Complexity conceives of ever more diverse modes of instrumentally focussed sound production, while the New Discipline eschews musical tropes altogether. This thesis formulates a new model of information flow in performance, to facilitate an understanding of the role physical gesture plays in the interpretative processes involved in the creation of bodily and cultural meaning, as derived from musical experiences. This model, based on the concept of the ‘assemblage’, allows for an in-depth consideration of the abstract topologies of external references in music, and provides a foundation for a taxonomy of the modes of disruption of gestural-sonorous linearity. This is developed in the pursuit of a more dynamic and meaningful conception of the role physical gesture plays in the acquisition of knowledge and meaning in music.
Local Beer: The construction of masculinity through the production and consumption of local beer
Authors:   , Saris Neave
Published: December 2021

Ideas of masculinity in Wellington, NZ are co-constructed in the creation of ‘craft’ or ‘local’ beer. This thesis explores the production and consumption of a commodity and its cultivation of ‘self’ to understand why only certain kinds of people drink beer. I draw on data gathered from interviews and participant observation to explore this self-making process. Results indicate that there is a movement from mainstream beer to craft beer locally produced and consumed. In the process of creating local beer the local consumer is also made. Beer is a self- making process. Key to my argument is the emergence of a particular type of masculinity. By producing and consuming locally, people reject the type of masculinity that has historically been established by mainstream beer, the white colonial male. Attributes include, hardworking, rugged, linked to the earth, and working class. Local beer, by way of contrast, promises a celebration of a myriad of identities in its celebration of all different styles and flavours of beer. My findings indicate that this is only a perception.  In Wellington, a new kind of man is being made in craft brewpubs, the ‘cultural omnivore’. The cultural omnivore is a man of middle or upper-middle class, has ‘taste’ and appreciation for flavourful beer, and is metropolitan. A significant implication of this research is the insight gained on how a commodity, beer, can facilitate in the making of certain kinds of people. This research contributes to anthropological scholarship on the creation of self and gender, at the level of the local consumer.
Code Optimisation Framework for Multicode Sonar Systems
Authors:   , Rashed Muhammad
Published: December 2021

The ocean is a temporally and spatially varying environment, the characteristics of which pose significant challenges to the development of effective underwater wireless communications and sensing systems.  An underwater sensing system such as a sonar detects the presence of a known signal through correlation. It is advantageous to use multiple transducers to increase surveying area with reduced surveying costs and time. Each transducers is assigned a dedicated code. When using multiple codes, the sidelobes of auto- and crosscorrelations are restricted to theoretical limits known as bounds. Sets of codes must be optimised in order to achieve optimal correlation properties, and, achieve Sidelobe Level (SLL)s as low as possible.  In this thesis, we present a novel code-optimisation method to optimise code-sets with any number of codes and up to any length of each code. We optimise code-sets for a matched filter for application in a multi-code sonar system. We first present our gradient-descent based algorithm to optimise sets of codes for flat and low crosscorrelations and autocorrelation sidelobes, including conformance of the magnitude of the samples of the codes to a target power profile. We incorporate the transducer frequency response and the channel effects into the optimisation algorithm. We compare the correlations of our optimised codes with the well-known Welch bound. We then present a method to widen the autocorrelation mainlobe and impose monotonicity. In many cases, we are able to achieve SLLs beyond the Welch bound.  We study the Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR) improvement of the optimised codes for an Underwater Acoustic (UWA) channel. During its propagation, the acoustic wave suffers non-constant transmission loss which is compensated by the application of an appropriate Time Variable Gain (TVG). The effect of the TVG modifies the noise received with the signal. We show that in most cases, the matched filter is still the optimum filter. We also show that the accuracy in timing is very important in the application of the TVG to the received signal.  We then incorporate Doppler tolerance into the existing optimisation algorithm. Our proposed method is able to optimise sets of codes for multiple Doppler scaling factors and non-integer delays in the arrival of the reflection, while still conforming to other constraints.  We suggest designing mismatched filters to further reduce the SLLs, firstly using an existing Quadratically Constrained Qaudratic Program (QCQP) formulation and secondly, as a local optimisation problem, modifying our basic optimisation algorithm.