bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Exploring Resettlement Impacts of Hydroelectric Projects
Authors:   , Chidmany Somsanid 
Published: November 2021

<p>Over the past five decades, there has been growing awareness of the potential negative effects of development-induced displacement and resettlement. For example, resettlement can threaten people’s livelihoods and well-being and sustainable development. In response to this phenomenon, many international financial organisations led by the World Bank have adopted safeguard policies, standards, and guidelines, especially around forced resettlement. These safeguard documents maintain that organisational and financial arrangements – through livelihood restoration programmes – can possibly alleviate displaced people’s impoverishment risks if those risks are correctly identified early. This thesis explores claims that such risks in development-caused involuntary population resettlement can be addressed by effective planning processes. Specifically, this thesis examines how resettlement and livelihood restoration programmes related to the Nam Theun 2 hydroelectric project (NT2) in Lao PDR were able (or not) to address the livelihood sustainability of resettled communities. In conducting fieldwork in Lao PDR, this thesis employed a mixed methods approach using both qualitative and quantitative methods including semi-structured interviews, focus groups, and analysis of quantitative and qualitative secondary data. The key findings found in this study reflect NT2’s mixed performance of resettlement. On the one hand, the project provided enormous advantages to Lao PDR: a) the cooperation between Lao government and international stakeholders including resettled people in the preparation of resettlement strategies; b) introducing the Lao government and resettled people to a new global standard of resettlement practice. On the other hand, this project also caused a number of challenges: a) incomplete preparation of the resettlement strategies; b) unsuccessful implementation of livelihood restoration programmes; and c) the lack of precision in terminology – stipulated in the CA – to enable the effective establishment of measures, indicators and criteria which could be used to inform objective and fair decision making. These findings seem to hold NT2 back from successfully achieving the sustainable development for resettled people’s livelihoods and well-being. The findings of this study should be of interest to development academics and practitioners working in the fields of energy development and development-induced displacement and resettlement. Specifically, the lessons learned from resettlement and livelihood restoration programmes implemented by Nam Theun 2 hydroelectric project are crucial, because it is considered a role model for other hydropower projects in Lao PDR. It is hoped that the results of this study can make a contribution to the on-going improvement of the Lao government’s existing policies on resettlement and livelihood restoration strategies in order to fulfil sustainable development goals.</p>
Reflexivity in the negotiation of participation: Insights from a culturally-embedded community project in Vietnam
Authors:   , Nguyen Nguyen Hai Duy 
Published: November 2021

<p>This research aims to explore the possible negotiation of participation within development practice in Vietnam based on different understandings of reflexivity among different development actors. Specifically, it adopts a qualitative approach, using a sustainable community livelihoods project in Central Vietnam as a case study, to ask the following questions: (1) How do Western and local development facilitators understand reflexivity in participatory development in Vietnam?; and (2) How do Western and local development facilitators negotiate and practice reflexivity in participatory development in Vietnam? These questions are important because while participation and fieldwork partnerships in community projects promise mutually-beneficial opportunities for shared learning, they also involve negotiations of power. The reflexivity of development practitioners assumes that they can obtain thorough understanding and knowledge of the local culture and facilitate participation appropriately, which may not actually be the case. Secondly, little is known about how participants think or practice their own culturally-embedded understandings of reflexivity in their interactions with non-local practitioners. Thirdly, there is a knowledge gap about how participation intersects with reflexivity as “Western” development discourses and local understandings are negotiated. Semi-structured interviews were employed with three groups of people positioned differently within the case study project: international development practitioners, Vietnamese development practitioners and local community members. Interpretative methods of auto-ethnography and reflexive writings were used to analyse the researcher’s own understandings of reflexivity and the working of power from his prior work as a translator in this project. Building on existing critiques of reflexivity, and through careful analysis, the thesis interrogates assumed links between reflexivity and better facilitation in community projects. The negotiations explored in this research include rethinking the principle of reflexivity in the context of local cultural norms as these significantly shape values of development work and likely benefits for practitioners and participants. From extracted perspectives of research participants through semi-structured interviews and the researcher’s reflections by means of auto-ethnography, an alternative approach is suggested to aid development practitioners in reflecting upon notions of “self” and “others” in order to examine various conceptions of participation in theory and practice.</p>
The Composer's Hand: An Analysis of Selected String Orchestral Works by Arvo Pärt
Authors:   , Johnson Mark 
Published: November 2021

<p>Arvo Pärt’s music has received little attention from theoretical scholars, in part, because it is often labelled as minimalist or process music. This is due primarily to his use of limited sets of musical materials and predetermined repetitive melodic and rhythmic procedures. In this sense, it is implied that authorial decisions play little role in the compositional process of his music. In addition, the confluences of multiple M-voice/T-voice pairings, which create a rich array of harmonically non-functional chord progressions, do not lend themselves to traditional approaches to musical analysis, thus acting as a further deterrent to analysts and theorists. This investigation postulates that the presence of the ‘composer’s hand’ is much more significant in Pärt’s music than has been previously realised by those who label his music as minimalist or process music; and by engaging in a multimodal methodology, this thesis demonstrates that Pärt’s music does, in fact, respond to post-tonal analytical approaches. It also shows that a non-traditional application of post-tonal analytical techniques can yield valuable and productive insights into Pärt’s compositional system, and that there is actually much for theorists and analysts to discover in his music. The approach to the investigation is based on drawing from and combining several post-tonal analytical methods, any one of which would be insufficient on its own, given the uniqueness of Pärt’s sound world and the fact that such approaches have been developed to enlighten very different repertoires. The methodology incorporates the following post-tonal analytical methods: descriptions of the ‘musical fabric’ of each work; a detailed analysis of how each composition appears to have been constructed; new approaches to visualising the relationships between the pitch classes of particular works; and mappings of each work’s pitch-class and interval-vector content. This investigation demonstrates, through multimodal analysis of six selected string orchestral works by the composer, that hidden beneath the seemingly ‘minimal’ surface layers of Pärt’s music are carefully crafted musical constructions that result from intersecting procedures and multifaceted rules, as well as what appear to be intentional exceptions to those rules – thus revealing the composer’s hand. An awareness of these hidden constructions and the careful craftsmanship that went into their creation can provide the informed listener with the critical foundation from which the aesthetic value of Pärt’s music can be assessed and appreciated.</p>
Iron-TAML Complexes: A Computational Approach to Improving Stability
Authors:   , Tuano Kevin 
Published: November 2021

<p>Researchers at the Institute for Green Oxidation Chemistry of the Carnegie Mellon University developed a group of catalysts called tetra amido macrocyclic ligand (TAML) activators. The purpose of that research was that TAML activators would breakdown pollutants in the presence of a sacrificial oxidant. Furthermore, the catalyst was designed to decompose on a required timescale, as to not damage the environment by prolonged exposure. Since the initial designs from the 1980’s, the TAML structure has undergone significant changes to increase efficiency or selectivity. Other uses of this group of catalysts have been explored, namely, the oxidation of water to molecular oxygen. This work presents a computational study using Density Functional Theory (DFT) which addresses the issue regarding the stability of certain iron-TAML intermediates in the water oxidation mechanism. Hence, the work seeks to explore how changing certain groups on the TAML ring can affect the stability of the reactive intermediates and the activation energy of the nucleophilic attack within the mechanism. The work highlights the importance of the fluorinated tail of the TAML structure in the accessibility of the desired transition state.</p>
Quantitative PCR Analysis of the Bartonella henselae carD Gene during Bacterial Stress
Authors:   , Simmonds Jacob 
Published: November 2021

<p>The Bartonella genus is comprised of arthropod-borne, intracellular bacterial pathogens that colonise the mammalian bloodstream. A large number of mammalian species are hosts for one or more Bartonella species, as either reservoir or incidental hosts. Bartonella species are only able to invade and replicate in host red blood cells in the reservoir host, and to be taken up by an associated haematophagous arthropod vector to complete transmission and the bacterial life cycle. Humans are the reservoir hosts for B. quintana and B. bacilliformis, and are incidental hosts for more than 16 additional zoonotic Bartonella species, including B. henselae, which is normally carried by cats. B. henselae infection, usually acquired through cat scratches or bites, can result in several clinical manifestations, with varying degrees of severity; the most common of these is cat scratch disease, where symptoms commonly range from enlarged lymph nodes to severe fever. Although usually a mild illness, B. henselae infection can occasionally lead to severe symptoms, affecting neurological and other major organ systems. During their life cycle the Bartonellae must adapt to various toxic host environments; such adaptation is mediated by several bacterial stress pathways, which modify bacterial transcription. However, many gaps remain in the understanding of B. henselae stress response pathways. The object of this study, the carD gene, was identified as a possible component of the Bartonella stress response. The carD gene has been shown to be critical for stress defence in other bacterial species, including Mycobacterium tuberculosis, Thermus thermophilus, and Myxococcus xanthus. Our study aimed to investigate whether carD played as significant a role during the B. henselae response to stresses as it does in other bacterial genera. We first attempted to perform growth comparisons between a B. henselae carD mutant strain and a wild type strain during exposure to stress conditions; however, our mutagenic carD plasmid interfered with bacterial growth of Escherichia coli cultures, which hindered transformation and generation of a B. henselae carD mutant. As an alternative, we investigated the expression of B. henselae carD under stress conditions, comparing carD expression during stress against a non-stressed B. henselae control, using quantitative PCR. We found no significant difference of expression of the carD gene between the control and any of our conditions, although a trend of increased carD expression was found in several stress conditions. We believe that these findings merit further study into the role of carD in the B. henselae stress response.</p>
Constructing childhood for children : an analysis of 1970s award-winning children's literature from the Children's Model Collection at Auckland City Libraries
Authors:   , Baker Sanya Karen 
Published: November 2021

<p>Childhood is not simply a personal experience of an individual human in their early years of life. It is also a social construct which governs the way a society treats its youngest members – if they are considered to be members yet at all. Children’s literature is an acknowledged source of information about the ideologies adults have both intentionally and unintentionally offered children to help them understand the world and their place in it. This research involved both content analysis and discourse analysis of award-winning children’s books from the 1970s, which form part of the Children’s Model Collection held at Auckland City Libraries. These books, considered by local librarians to be ‘model literature’ for New Zealand children to read, were used as a window onto the constructions of childhood in this society at that time. Traditional children’s literature in English supported particular relations of domination through certain ‘institutions’ of childhood – family, friendship, gender, race and religion. The 1970s books also imparted ideologies through these institutions along with themes of land, coming of age and war; all interacting under a humanistic umbrella. Through their treatment of these themes or ‘institutions’, texts in this sample often deliberately challenged traditional relations of domination – with varied levels of success. Children were constructed as leaders in waiting, the hope for the future; a future where tolerance and respect would overcome prejudice, thinking for one’s self would replace conformity and the individual could be the best they could be. However, underlying linguistic mechanisms and ideologies transformed many of these texts into conservators of the very relationships they were intending to change. The methods of analysis used in this project were successful in locating the ideologies in books created for young people and revealing the degree to which these are agents of their time. These methods then are both eminently suitable for future research and would be a valuable addition to the multi-literacies with which we equip young people</p>
Hungry for Progress? Enacting Food Sovereignty
Authors:   , Kula-Kaczmarski Natasha 
Published: November 2021

<p>This research builds upon and utilises an emerging field of food and development theory – food sovereignty – as it discusses possibilities for an alternative food system, where the production, distribution and consumption of food may be guided by principles that foster a holistic, ethical and sustainable approach. The theory of food sovereignty has grown from the writings of La Via Campesina (a global movement of food producers in the Global South) and offers critiques of the current food system, food security and corporate globalisation. As I grapple with the key principles of food sovereignty and explore the ways in which they are visible within Wellington, Aotearoa, I interact with five key organisations and present ways their actions foster a food sovereignty paradigm. By blending the theoretical with the practical, this thesis presents the lived experiences of people working in; Koanga Institute, Biofarm, Commonsense Organics, Workerbe and Kaibosh. Bringing together the perspectives of these five organisations with relevant literature, this thesis first discusses some potential market-based solutions for achieving ethical consumption. It then examines ideas around the move to ‘grow something’ as a tool for resistance, reclaiming spaces and healing; to finally explore the ways in which a more holistic approach to food can nurture spiritual connections in profound and unique ways. Hungry for Progress? Enacting Food Sovereignty is a qualitative research project that embraces notions of positionality and reflexivity and shares my journey of living this research. Through exploring the food sovereignty narratives and worldviews, I seek to promote empowerment among individuals and organisations through constructing knowledge that supports postcolonial, feminist and activist interactions so that good change in the food system (and beyond) may become a reality.</p>
A Paleoclimate Reconstruction of the Little Ice Age to Modern Era Climate Conditions in the Eastern Ross Sea, Antarctica as Captured in the RICE Ice Core
Authors:   , Brightley Hannah 
Published: November 2021

<p>The Little Ice Age (LIA) (1400-1850 AD) represents one of the most significant climatic shifts over the past 5000 years. Previous studies from Antarctica indicate generally cooler and stormier conditions during this period, but this pattern shows distinct spatial and temporal variability. The Roosevelt Island Climate Evolution (RICE) ice core provides a new opportunity to study the drivers behind this variability at annual/seasonal resolution, in a relatively under-sampled and climatically sensitive region in the eastern Ross Sea. Contrary to previous studies, isotope measurements suggest warm conditions during the LIA at Roosevelt Island. This study presents analysis of eight major ions (Na⁺, Mg²⁺, Ca²⁺, K⁺, MS⁻, Cl⁻, NO₃⁻, SO₄²⁻) using both Ion Chromatograph and ICP-MS data, in order to reconstruct the atmospheric circulation pattern, sea ice extent and marine primary productivity across this LIA to Modern Era (ME) at Roosevelt Island. The dataset is tied to a robust age model allowing annual dating and the opportunity to accurately reconstruct rates of change during this ME-LIA. Challenges revolving around the calibration of the Ion Chromatograph are also discussed. The major ion record determines whether the lack of cooling in the Roosevelt Island core implied by the stable isotopes represents a true temperature anomaly or whether the atmospheric circulation pattern caused an isotopic enrichment that masks an underlying cooling. It was determined that Roosevelt Island experienced during the LIA (i) an increase in marine air mass intrusions along with weaker katabatic winds compared to the 200 years prior, (ii) decreased biological productivity and (iii) increased sea ice. From the 1850-1880s to 1992 AD, there is a shift to reduced marine winds, increased katabatics, increased biological productivity and decreased sea ice until 1992. In the wider Ross Sea context, this suggests an east-west divide in terms of the dominance of katabatics versus marine wind influence. This divide is attributed with the warming signal seen in the RICE record in the Eastern Ross Sea and the cooling in the Western Ross Sea records. It is also likely linked to the influence of climate indices on the depth/position of the Amundsen Sea Low.</p>
The development of science epistemology in senior science courses: A quantitative study
Authors:   , McIntosh Edit 
Published: November 2021

<p>Epistemological development is a pivotal aspect of liberal education because the ability to distinguish between knowledge and pseudo-knowledge and the ability to use the particular methods of reasoning associated with various disciplinary fields equips people to make judgements in complex issues. The present study examines the extent to which studying each of the different science disciplines in secondary years 12 and 13 supports the development of science epistemology. A further aim was to determine the relationship between epistemological development in science and the completion of inquiry-type coursework. Data were collected from 735 year 12 and 13 students from 11 schools, mainly from the Wellington region. A survey, designed for this study, comprised statements about the nature of science and scientific argumentation conceptions, two pivotal aspects of science epistemology. Using a quasi-experimental design, this quantitative study explores the extent of the development of science epistemology over a year of studying science, by comparing students’ scores in Term 1 with scores in Term 3 on the instrument. The findings showed a more advanced epistemic view among science students; however, a positive effect of science studies on epistemic development was not evident. It was concluded that a greater emphasis on authentic inquiry is essential for epistemic development and, while understanding of the philosophical assumptions underpinning scientific knowledge is important, this should arise from authentic science inquiries – or the processes of science – rather than being taught in isolation from the practice of the discipline of science. This leads to a question the extent to which an emphasis should be placed on the ontological aspects of the philosophy and the sociology of science, potentially at the expense of developing sound understanding of science epistemology.</p>