bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
2084: The Fantasy Compact
Authors:   , Sanchez Laura 
Published: December 2021

<p>For the last two decades, social media has increasingly dominated our day to day interactions. We have evolved into digitized creatures able to communicate on a daily basis to a broad and varied audience, comprised of people we know, people we hardly know, and people we have never met. Through images, tweets, status updates and posts, everyone has an ability to view and harness a variety of opinions, emotions, stories and ideas at a moment’s notice. It’s in those instances when a person resonates with a certain moment or place they are in, that they create a narrative through a caption or a hashtag that’s attached to an image which allows everyone who views it to read a story of someone’s experience. This digital/virtual age poses new questions for interior architecture, a practice that generally orients itself in the realm of physical, built space. It is the intent of this research to offer a new kind of design approach, more relevant to our current digitized lives, to see what it might offer for urban interior speculations. Through exploring ways of tapping into this narrative and ‘flipping the script’, we can explore a new kind of design tactic that brings forward the power that social media narratives can have on the built environment and interior strategies. The city of Los Angeles will be used as a testing grounds for narrative urban interior tactics, to see how it could offer the city whimsical and outlandish interventions that respond to the people currently interacting with certain sites in it. As a nod to George Orwell’s 1984 future speculations, this project is a counterpoint that offers an optimistic, open and free speculation tool by providing a constant dialogue between the public and designer through the forum of Instagram. This project teases out the ideas that narrative can create instinctual, intuitive and thought-provoking designs that can be spectacles, attractors, events or counterparts that open up a potential to talk about interior in a new realm, where it can contribute on larger scales like the urban setting. Urban interior tactics provide outcomes that even in an exterior setting can still create moments of interiority around them as well as within them that bring together two conditions in a propositional manner as opposed to being opposites. In order to translate the narratives into conceptual design outcomes, drawing and model making will be used as the primary exploratory tools. This offers the audience different means of perception to be gauged through putting it back out into the forum it was derived from, allowing for three final outcomes that respond more accurately to how people react to open narrative as a design tool.</p>
Cultural Magnitude: Interactive visual mapping - A hybrid network for indigenous data
Authors:   , Curle Shayna-Lucy 
Published: December 2021

<p>This research has been undertaken in response to the limitations of standard mapping techniques, in particular, those that use ESRI-based technology and delivery. The work argues that our ability to understand the complex nature of indigenous ontologies and spatial models are affected by the available tools and their ontological frameworks. It sets out to visualise, in a tool, traditionally non-physical, but inherently spatial, data and information. The map, in a traditional sense, now becomes a fluid, open, self-referential virtual topography or ‘space’, challenging the rational top-down fixity of western cartographic representation. As an architectural thesis, it seeks to create holistically structured space as a virtual edifice and is concerned with that which is not represented and concludes that the most important aspect of creating a mapping framework for an indigenous ontology is to understand the inseparable relationship between people, knowledge and land. The research describes a tool designed and built by the author that contributes to cultural and spiritual health (whai ora) and wellbeing of Māori. Through its ontological framework, it aims to provide an alternate map that enables users to navigate and share cultural knowledge. The central concept is to ‘re-connect’, in particular, urban and disenfranchised Māori, through the creation of a virtual space that can be customised and inhabited in various ways by its users. It questions and challenges what is included and what is excluded, what can be represented, asking where might culture have a ‘place’? How might people and their environments effect change in themselves? In others? Cultural Magnitude is the exploration of the development of a tool that acts as a digital representation and storage place of whakapapa and taonga, and as a cultural resource for Māori to understand their spiritual bounds to physical locations - a tangible foundation for a digital marae.</p>
The effect of institutions and failure-based learning on entry mode choice
Authors:   , Kargozar Naghmeh 
Published: December 2021

<p>This study investigates the role of learning from failures and how learning from failure of others shapes the entry mode choice of subsequent entrants – a choice between joint venture (JV) and wholly owned subsidiary (WOS). A review of the entry modes and institutional perspective literature has revealed that research to date has focused on the effect of successes rather than failures. While it recognises the effect of other firms’ entry mode on the entry mode decisions of subsequent entrants, it has overlooked the influence of failures’ on entry mode. It is important to investigate the effect of failure of other firms since it has been recognised by organisational learning scholars as a valuable source of information for firms to improve their performance, decrease their uncertainty and consequently influences their actions. Therefore, the present research applies institutional and organisational learning perspectives as the underpinning theories to examine how the failure of others determines the entry mode choice of a firm. Further investigation was carried out on how a firm’s entry mode decision in response to regulative and normative institutions might be asymmetric. Additionally, firms’ responses to institutional dimensions were analysed further by investigating how they would change with experience in the host country and in other foreign countries. This study applied a quantitative approach to answer these questions in the context of China. The data for this study consists of 1021 observations invested by 622 foreign firms from 2003 to 2012. Through a logistic regression analysis, this study found that the failure of prior entrants with JV structure increases a new entrant’s tendency to choose JV over WOS. Moreover, regulative distance negatively influences the choice of JV whereas the effect of normative distance was found to be positive. Regarding the effect of experience, host country experience was found to be an influential factor that mitigates the effect of regulative and normative distance on the entry mode choice. The findings of the present research contribute to both institutional and entry mode literature by demonstrating that firms make their entry mode decisions based on information inferred from prior entrants’ failures. This research also contributes to organisational learning literature by showing that responses to failures are not merely avoidance-based, but rather based on the firm’s evaluation of the cause of failure.</p>
Moemoea: A digital tool to train secondary school student resilience and motivation for success
Authors:   , Johnson Thomas 
Published: December 2021

<p>Secondary school students in New Zealand have been underachieving in recent years, with one of the largest performance gaps between high and low performing students in the OECD. With an overrepresentation of Māori, Pasifika and low socioeconomic students in this low performing group, this research explores an innovative solution and presents a business case of Moemoea- a digital tool to train resilience and self-motivation to support student success. Disruption of jobs with automation in future workplaces from rapid technological advancement requires workers to be proficient in digital literacy, resilience, and self-motivation. The literature suggests that these skills lead to improved confidence and academic outcomes and were the same capabilities required beyond school, in the new digitally focused work environment. This research interviewed 14 Māori, Pasifika and low socioeconomic secondary school students, collecting first-hand experiences of resilience, motivation, and resources that support successful academic outcomes at school. The research findings identified an untapped opportunity between high digital skills and access to technology and a lack of student motivation and resilience levels to harness this advantage to improve student learning. Government ministries are identified as a likely customer because they are the entity currently addressing the performance gap between high and low achievers in New Zealand secondary schools. The findings and business case demonstrate the feasibility of investment in the research and development of both Moemoea and other possible solutions to poor performing students.</p>
Mitochondrial Transfer in Saccharomyces cerevisiae
Authors:   , Hummel Sonja 
Published: December 2021

<p>This thesis investigated mitochondrial transfer in Saccharomyces cerevisiae, between respiratory compromised B18p⁰ recipient and respiratory competent donor cells. The respiratory compromised strain had three red fluorescent proteins tagged to the membrane, nucleus and cytoplasm (triple RFP-B18p⁰) and is referred to as the B18p⁰ strain. B18p⁰ cells did not contain mitochondrial DNA, causing it to be respiratory compromised and required a fermentable carbon source, such as glucose/dextrose, for proliferation. The respiratory competent strain used had a green fluorescent protein tagged to the Tom70 mitochondrial protein (Tom70-GFP) and is referred to as the Tom70 strain. The Tom70 cells contained the nuclear encoded URA3 cassette, allowing for negative selectivity of this strain using 5-FOA. S. cerevisiae strains were co-cultured together in media containing only non-fermentable carbon sources (YPGE), plated on YPGE plates containing 5-FOA and colonies grown were distinguished post-co-culture based on their distinct phenotypic and genotypic characteristics. Fluorescent analysis of co-culture colonies revealed the presence of 5-FOA resistant Tom70 cells and some red B18p⁰ cells that had acquired the ability to grow on non-fermentable carbon sources. Genotypic analysis revealed that the majority of these red colonies had acquired mtDNA as well as the nuclear encoded, Tom70 specific URA3 cassette. Several permutations of co-cultures were performed, using different ratios of recipient and donor cells and single-gene deletion donor cells. Purified mitochondria from Tom70 cells were tried to be transferred into B18p⁰ cells using centrifugation forces to induce a higher occurrence frequency of mitochondrial transfer. Metabolic support experiments were conducted to investigate if the Tom70 strain could provide metabolic support to the B18p⁰ strain without mitochondrial transfer. Results indicate that no permutation induced potential mitochondrial transfer at a higher rate than others. However, results indicate that mitochondrial transfer did occur at low frequencies, potentially through the fusion of respiratory competent and respiratory compromised cells. Forced transfer did not increase the occurrence frequency of B18p⁰ cells to take up mitochondria and Tom70 cells did not provide metabolic support to B18p⁰ cells.</p>
Make Yourself At Home: Can architecture enable a sense of home in Kuala Lumpur’s public housing?
Authors:   , Ibrahim Nadrah 
Published: December 2021

<p>Public housing in Kuala Lumpur was introduced by the government as a means of replacing informal settlements and providing housing for the lower income. Government subsidies often cover some of the costs of public housing to help keep it affordable and at the lower end of house prices. To help meet the low cost agenda, public house designs are often kept to a minimal standard in Malaysia, removing low income Malay dwellers from their ideal image of home. In the long run, signs of neglect in the public houses are reflected in the lack of care and maintenance from dwellers, vandalism and more. This thesis proposes that good, homely architectural design practices suited to the dweller can help encourage emotional ties between dwellers (low income families) and the dwelling (public houses). Its aim is to investigate potential architectural design approaches to tackle such problems in future Kuala Lumpur public houses. This raises the question of which homely architectural design strategies might be best utilised in the Kuala Lumpur public housing environment. The thesis begins by exploring the meaning of home in relation to both dwellers and dwelling before then identifying ‘homely’ architectural design practices suited to the Malay community. In the context of public houses, this research investigation identifies privacy, environmental comfort, security and safety as homely aspects that are most often lacking in public housing design, contributing to a less homely environment. To enhance the homely attributes of public houses, the thesis proposes ways to restore homely qualities of spaces in the public house, drawing from these three aspects in order to arrive at design opportunities best suited to the lifestyle of its dwellers.</p>
Democratisation in Asia-Pacific Monarchies: Drivers and Impediments
Authors:   , Bogle Christine 
Published: December 2021

<p>In the first decade of the 21st century, Bhutan and Tonga enacted reforms which took executive power away from the monarch and placed it the hands of an elected government. Conversely, Thailand and Nepal have faltered in their trajectory towards democracy. Thailand is stuck in a cycle of repression, popular protest, limited democracy, renewed military takeover, and constitutional revision to allow a controlled “democracy.” Nepal has broken out of a similar cycle (although without military rule), at the cost of abolishing its monarchy. This thesis looks at factors, including the monarchy’s role, which contributed to the different outcomes. The study questions Huntington’s theory of the modernising monarch’s dilemma (fear that reform would do the monarch out of a job), and suggests that, on the contrary, a democratising monarch is more likely to retain the throne, albeit with reduced power. This comparative qualitative study is based on research into primary and secondary sources, plus interviews. The thesis found that in Bhutan and Tonga strong leadership of democratisation by Kings Jigme Singye and George V greatly favoured a successful democratic transition. In both Thailand and Nepal, monarchs Bhumibol and Gyanendra resisted a democratic bargain, seeking instead to retain or regain political power, in a context where popular mobilisation and the role of the military were significant in both countries, but with considerable differences. Contrary to Huntington’s theory, monarchs in Thailand and Nepal, in seeking to avoid loss of political ascendancy suffered the opposite, although to differing degrees (one monarchy was disestablished while the other first gained ground but ultimately ceded ground to the military, reversing a pattern of monarchical dominance in the partnership). The thesis concluded that, against a historical background of special status for the monarch as symbol of national unity, and even in the face of unpromising structural conditions, monarchs who used their charisma to promote and lead a move to democracy were a critical factor in whether a transition would be successful, while securing the future of the monarchy for their heirs. Conversely, monarchs who formed strategic alliances with elite groups seeking to preserve their ascendancy, including the military, provided an excuse to autocratic groups for resisting democracy and risked either a reversion to (or retention of) autocratic rule or a transition to a democracy that did not include a place for the monarchy.</p>
A critical exploration of professional perceptions of harm reduction policy and practice in Vietnam
Authors:   , Truong Tuan Dung 
Published: December 2021

<p>Throughout the 1990s, Vietnam experienced a dramatic rise in the prevalence of HIV among people who use drugs. In response, Vietnam’s Ministry of Health implemented several legal and policy interventions in the name of harm reduction. However, perceptions about drug use, people who use drugs, addiction and the nature of official interventions are contested. For many Vietnamese officials, abstinence remains the dominant philosophy. Drug use is considered a ‘social evil’ in Vietnam and people who use drugs face draconian controls and incarceration in the name of treatment and crime prevention. Against this background, this thesis explores how key stakeholders perceive harm reduction philosophy and how they apply it in policy and practice. Based on qualitative and quantitative methods, it presents findings from a survey with 250 respondents and 26 semi-structured interviews, all with professionals involved in responding to drug use in Vietnam. The thesis illustrates that these professionals prefer abstinence approaches, and often see addiction as the result of moral failings and brain diseases. While some interventions in the name of harm reduction are accepted, they are firmly rooted within a narrow public health perspective. Professional misperceptions about the key principles and practices of ‘authentic’ harm reduction are widespread. Many professionals believe, for example, that harms can only be limited through reductions in the demand and supply of drugs, or that detaining people who use drugs in compulsory treatment centres is a form of harm reduction. These rationales have resulted in continuing police crackdowns, and the use of ‘pseudo’ harm reduction strategies to control and punish people who use drugs. Meanwhile, there are limited official attempts to address problems experienced by people who use drugs, like social isolation, stigma, discrimination, human rights violations, or problems of community reintegration. In conclusion, while a harm reduction rhetoric is regularly employed in Vietnam, ‘pseudo’ harm reduction strategies are carried out.</p>
Perspectives of Lower Primary Teachers Implementing New Numeracy Strategies in Maritime Schools in Fiji
Authors:   , Prakash Helen 
Published: December 2021

<p>In Fiji, concerns about the quality of education and low standards of achievement, particularly salient in numeracy, have led to reform initiatives requiring teacher pedagogical shifts to more evidence-based and learner-centered approaches. Despite previously unsuccessful reforms, the capacity of maritime teachers to successfully adapt curricula in their geographically constrained environments has never been considered, despite them forming a significant proportion of the primary teaching force. This interpretative qualitative study examines the implementation of a recent reform-based numeracy strategy in lower primary mathematics classrooms of maritime schools. Specifically, teachers’ perspectives on the implementation process, their experiences with the new strategies, associated challenges, and maritime context-specific barriers have been investigated. Data were collected through two in-context focus group interviews with 13 participants and 62 returned questionnaires. The findings of the study reveal that teachers’ perceptions and receptivity to the new numeracy strategies were strongly influenced by factors such as past experiences with reforms and increased expectations. While teachers understood key ideas underlying the reform to improve student’s mathematical knowledge and were inclined to alter pedagogical practices, most teachers felt a disconnect in terms of not being supported well enough to fully incorporate the new strategies. Teachers identified the need for a contextually-relevant supportive network and structures, both professional and personal, as essential to overcoming numerous challenges they encountered while living and working in maritime areas of Fiji.</p>
Māori Purposes Acts: Just "washing-up" or more than meets the eye?
Authors:   , O'Meara Angela 
Published: December 2021

<p>Māori Purposes Bills were commonly described in Parliament’s debating chamber as “washing-up” bills, which suggested they were considered to be of little importance. This research challenges that perspective. The research explores Māori Purposes Acts as a body of law, beginning in 1931. It considers the content of the legislation, the legislative process and the role of Māori Purposes Acts within the legislative framework. The research examines policy provisions and amendments, the petitions process facilitated by the legislation, special governance arrangements, and remedial provisions including settlements with the Crown. The research incorporates quantitative analysis, but due to the variability of the provisions contained in the legislation, a predominantly qualitative approach is used to consider the nature of the Acts. The research operates within an orthodox legal paradigm and Karl Llewellyn’s “law-jobs” theory is used as an analytical framework to identify common themes, draw out the purposes of the legislation and understand its role in New Zealand’s legal system. Critical race and post-colonial theoretical perspectives are acknowledged but are not central to the research. The research also considers whether Māori Purposes Acts delivered justice for Māori prior to the modern Treaty of Waitangi settlements process. The research concludes the washing-up characterisation was often inaccurate. The research found Māori Purposes Acts were used as a mechanism to provide Māori with relief from and remedies for particular problems, which were often raised by petition to Parliament, and remedies gave effect to recommendations of the Māori Affairs Committee and Royal Commissions. Some remedies were expressed as settlements of Māori grievances against the Crown, which preceded modern Treaty of Waitangi settlements. The legislation was used to maintain the legislative framework governing Māori land ownership and Māori communities, to introduce new policies and fill policy gaps, and to create special exceptions to the legislative framework including special governance provisions. The research provides evidence of the poor fit between the restrictive legislative framework governing Māori lives and Māori needs, and it demonstrates the inability of New Zealand’s legal system to deliver justice for Māori. Although many provisions attempted to ameliorate inequities, correct mistakes and resolve disputes, provisions often fell short of meeting the criteria for justice and are best described as taking important steps towards justice.</p>