bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Machining Ornament: An investigation into contemporary machining practices and the creation of patterned ornamental surfaces
Authors:   , Saunders Samuel 
Published: November 2021

<p>Robotic tools open a new frontier in surface articulation. The combination of computer modelling with robotic tools allows the transfer of digital information onto physical objects with comparative ease. This permits a more intricate approach to building; where the architect can incorporate new ornamental effects onto surfaces increasing the diversity of our built environment. This use of contemporary tools to articulate surfaces has heralded a return of ornament to the artistic repertoire of the architect. Once again, the architect can be involved in the intricacies of instilling narratives into material surfaces. This thesis identiﬁes this resurgence in ornamental effects and aims to question how robotic tools facilitate the creation of ornamental architecture. This thesis involves the digital creation of patterns which considers the creation of parametric designs that hold a particular narrative. This thesis also experiments with the potential of metal sheet forming to identify the parameters that guide the sheet form. These two topics work in unison whereby the digital design has been limited by the parameters discovered through physical experimentation. The machining process of Incremental Sheet Forming (ISF) is investigated as to its potential in the manipulation of sheet metal. Speciﬁ cally, the robot is used to discover the potential of sheet forming through the creation of a full-scale prototype. This practical research shows how considered use of robotic tools can bring greater connection to our built environment. Intricate detailing of architecture boosts the experiential connection between the building and inhabitant, strengthening a person’s attachment to their physical environment.</p>
Truthmaking and the world-time parallel
Authors:   , Leniston-Lee Gareth 
Published: November 2021

<p>There is a close structural parallel between the way we talk about time and the way we talk about modality (i.e. matters of possibility, necessity, actuality etc.). A consequence of this is that whenever we construct a metaphysical argument within one of these domains, there is a parallel argument to be made in the other. On the face of it, this parallel between possible worlds and moments in time seems to commit us to holding corresponding attitudes to the ontological status of non-present and non-actual entities. In this thesis I assess a claim made by Sider (2001: 41-42) that truthmaking – the idea that truth is grounded in existence – provides a way to avoid the commitment to ontological symmetry that this world-time parallel seems to foist upon us. Truthmaking challenges presentists, who deny the existence of past entities and actualists, who deny the existence of merely possible entities, to come up with a way of grounding truths that are ostensively about the events and entities that they deny exist. Sider’s claim can be broken down into three propositions: 1. Truthmaking provides reason to reject presentism. 2. Truthmaking does not provide reason to reject actualism. 3. Truthmaking breaks the ontological symmetry between time and modality. In this thesis I argue that while 1 is false, 3 remains true. While I am not a presentist myself I do not think that truthmaking provides a sound basis for rejecting the position. Much of this thesis is dedicated to defending presentism against the challenge truthmaking poses. I also don’t believe that truthmaking undermines actualism, but do not commit myself to any particular actualist response to the truthmaking challenge in this thesis. My central aim is to show that the presentist has a viable response to the truthmaking challenge and that this response does not have a viable parallel in the modal case. So while I think that both presentists and actualists can provide adequate responses to the challenge truthmaking poses, truthmaking still breaks the symmetry because the arguments made in defence of each position are very different. So one might rationally accept one argument but not the other.</p>
'It's either Maccas or uni': A Bourdieusian analysis of working-class youth in New Zealand
Authors:   , Lockyer Orin 
Published: November 2021

<p>School to work transitions is often presented as a binary choice. You either pursue a university education that is framed as a sure-fire pathway to both social and economic mobility, or you pursue a ‘lesser’ form of industrial and vocational training, with little of hope of advancement. However, this thesis argues that this assumption must be contested, as it obscures the complexity of all school to work transitions and the potential for social mobility in these ‘lesser’ forms of education. Through interviews with young men and women who are training as an apprentice or have recently completed their apprenticeship, this thesis hopes to provide a more complex snapshot of school to work transitions, focusing on how apprentices find and adapt to their new trade. My overall argument centres on Bourdieu’s theory of practice which is often discussed concerning the specific class-based outcomes of education for students from different class conditions (Bourdieu 1977). While this approach is useful to showing the complexity of school to work transitions from supposedly ‘lesser’ pathways, this approach is overly reliant on habitus, presenting a type of individual agency that is primarily reproductive and non-conducive to any potential transformation. Instead of focusing on just habitus in understanding this transition, a greater emphasis is placed on Bourdieu’s concept of ‘field’. Specifically, how field conditions can influence both the degree and the type of agency within a field, presenting a more complicated conception of agency that can be simultaneously reproductive and transformative.</p>
A study of the interplay between the law and organisational codes of conduct with regards to sexual harassment in New Zealand
Authors:   , Menne-Spohr Heike 
Published: November 2021

<p>The aim of this research is to fill a gap in the New Zealand literature which is to investigate whether the sexual harassment legislation is being understood, implemented and monitored in organisations effectively. This thesis explores how organisations in New Zealand are using tick-box compliance when implementing sexual harassment legislation into their employee policies and procedures documents due to the ambiguity of certain words. It looks at the role that Human Resources consultants and trade unions play, and further using the endogeneity model, the thesis explores the effect that tick-box compliance has on the legal consciousness of sexual harassment in organisations and third parties. Data was collected through semi-structured interviews with Human Resources professional at public and private sector organisations, Human Resources consultants as well as trade union representatives who are actively involved with the implementation and management of sexual harassment policies in the workplace. It was found that organisations had implemented sexual harassment policies and procedures several years previously and that these had not been changed significantly due to a lack of change in the law itself. The findings also indicate that the organisations implement sexual harassment polices using a tick-box approach and they do not necessarily fully understand the legislation. It was suggested that the emphasis had shifted from sexual harassment to bullying and that the third parties like trade unions and Human Resources consultants see more cases of this than sexual harassment. The thesis concludes that although organisations have sexual harassment policies and procedures, these are outdated and are not part of the legal consciousness of organisations, trade unions and Human Resources consultants. The ambiguous nature of the wording in the law itself and the lack of guidelines for organisations on how to implement them has resulted in tick-box compliance and organisations do not know if their policies are effective or not. Further the low penalties for sexual harassment behaviour means that there is no incentive for sexual harassment victims to raise complaints.</p>
ΔFosB: A Molecular Mechanism of MDMA Dependence
Authors:   , Foote Jason 
Published: November 2021

<p>Rationale. 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA) is a widely used illicit substance and some users show signs of abuse and dependence. It has been suggested that addiction reflects persistent neuroplasticity and one proposed mechanism has been a change in the expression of the transcription factor, ΔFosB. Objectives. This study determined whether ΔFosB expression in reward-relevant brain areas was altered as a function of MDMA self-administration. Methods. Rats were separated into triads. One rat self-administered MDMA (master rat) and the other 2 rats received either MDMA (yoked MDMA) or saline (yoked saline) infusions contingent on the behaviour of the master rat. Testing continued until a total intake of 350 mg/kg of MDMA was delivered. Two days following the final self-administration session, rats were sacrificed and perfused transcardially. Brains were removed, and ΔFosB immunohistochemistry was conducted. ΔFosB expression in striatum and medial prefrontal cortex was compared across groups. Results. Unfortunately the tissue from many of the yoked MDMA rats was compromised and therefore data from this group were not included in any analyses. MDMA self-administration produced a significantly greater expression of ΔFosB in the ventromedial and ventrolateral portions of the caudate putamen when compared to expression produced following yoked saline exposure. Within the infralimbic cortex, accumbens shell and dorsolateral caudate putamen differences approached significance. A significant correlation between ΔFosB expression in the ventromedial caudate putamen and cumulative active lever presses across the final 5 days of self-administration was also found. Conclusions. These findings provide the first evidence of MDMA-induced expression of ΔFosB. Increased expression of ΔFosB was observed in regions associated with the development and maintenance of drug addiction. These data support the idea that induction of ΔFosB may present a mechanism by which MDMA can induce alterations in genetic transcription, which may underlie the development of MDMA dependence. Future studies should utilise antagonism of ΔFosB via region-selective administration of Δc-jun in order to further elucidate the role of these transcriptional changes in the development and maintenance of self-administration.</p>
Problematizing the photographic images of pedagogical documentation: A Foucauldian Analysis
Authors:   , Whitaker Daniel 
Published: November 2021

<p>Photographic practices and the images they generate play a dominant role in documenting and assessing children’s learning and development in the early childhood education environments of Aotearoa-New Zealand. In the context of pedagogical documentation these visual practices are predominantly enacted through the medium of digital photography, utilized both locally (through assessment documentation) and nationally (through various policy documents). My concerns are in regards to the normalizing and regulatory effects of such visual practices, and how the photographic image is implicated in the construction of particular subjectivities in diverse populations of young children. The revised Aotearoa-New Zealand early childhood curriculum, Te Whāriki (2017a) is the first iteration of the national document to include photographic images and thus presents a timely opportunity to engage with questions concerning this contemporary visual politic. By means of addressing these concerns I work within a post-structural epistemological framework, drawing methodological insights from the philosophy of Michel Foucault and Gilles Deleuze/Félix Guattari. This Rhizomatic epistemology, inspired by both Deleuzio-Guattarian and Foucauldian scholarship, is an experimental mode of inquiry that acts to illuminate, resist and transgress dominant discursive constructs and the subjectivities they produce. Each chapter of this thesis takes the diffuse realm of photographic practices and processes of subjectivity in the context of education as their impetus, making linkages between texts, concepts and the child subject. This thesis suggests that an entanglement of both neoliberal and ‘psy’ rationalities are constitutive of particular visual-discursive practices, which mutually serve individualizing ends and construct particular subjectivities at this point in history. These predominant discourses and the subjectivities they are productive of are perceived to be problematic on the grounds that they place burdensome levels of responsibility on the young citizen and act to erode other educational values such as collective responsibility and community. It is further suggested that these predominant discourses are problematic in the sense that they act to foreclose other ways of thinking and being in educational settings to the effect of limiting other possible subject-positions (thought or unthought) that both child and teacher might come to inhabit within these spaces.</p>
Material Agency
Authors:   , Bush Isabelle 
Published: November 2021

<p>The ‘material turn’ of the twentieth century focuses on the vibrancy of matter and non-human agency, providing an engaging platform from which to re-assess, and also promote, the role of materiality in design. The material turn draws away from a ‘representational’ paradigm towards a focus on materials as being non-objective, performative and responsive, where materials operate as authoritative matter. This design research thesis investigates the agential capacity of materials to amplify atmospheric experience in architecture. Through this research proposition, the thesis harnesses contemporary material perspectives to drive a series of enquiries that explore material agency in design. Within this framework, the design research seeks to strengthen relationships between user, matter and site. This method engages and evaluates materials on a tactile and emotional level, reflected in its atmospheric outputs. Ultimately, the design research employs materiality as an agent in the production of a 1:1 scale installation and two speculative building designs at the domestic and public scale. A historic site in East London has been selected to provide the contextual and material foundations for the design research. This thesis concludes that materials have an ability to exert force on the design process when they are engaged in a responsive feedback loop which acknowledges the transformative capacity of both ‘human’ and ‘nonhuman’ elements. The dynamic nature of scaling as a design method supported these findings by encouraging progressive dialogue between matter and design process.</p>
Situating English Language Teaching in Indonesia within a Critical, Global Dialogue of Theories: A Case Study of Teaching Argumentative Writing and Cross-Cultural Understanding Courses
Authors:   , Wahyudi Ribut 
Published: November 2021

<p>This dissertation aims to critically examine lecturers’ discursive statements in interviews and English Language Teaching (ELT) classroom practices in Indonesia, primarily in the teaching of Argumentative Writing (AW) and Cross Cultural Understanding (CCU) courses at two universities (Multi-Religious and Islamic University) in Java. This study uses poststructural and interdisciplinary lenses: Foucauldian Discourse Analysis (FDA); Connell’s (2007) ideas of Southern Theory, Kumaravadivelu’s (2006b) Post Method Pedagogy, and Al-Faruqi’s (1989) and Al-Attas’ (1993) Islamisation of knowledge, as well as the critiques of these theories and other postcolonial voices. The critical examination of ELT practices through poststructural and interdisciplinary lenses in an Indonesian context is urgent, as teaching practices at present are subjected by competing regimes of ‘truth’ including Western, neoliberal, Southern, and Islamic discourses. The data were collected from curriculum policy documents, semi structured interviews, stimulated recalls and classroom observations from seven lecturers. The data were then transcribed and analysed primarily using FDA and also discussed in relation to other interdisciplinary theories, the critiques of these theories, and other relevant postcolonial literatures. Within the analysis there is a particular focus on how ELT Methods and World Englishes are enacted, negotiated, or resisted by lecturers. This study strongly suggests that Western discourses have dominated other regimes of truth, as evidenced in the privileging of process and genre approaches, global Northern structures of AW essay, as well as an emphasis on American and British English in AW courses and the privileging of those two dominant English varieties in CCU courses in most contexts. The study also suggests there are tensions between religious discourse and emerging neoliberal discourses in national policies and university documents and some lecturers’ language. Southern discourses seem to have been marginalised and seem to be only resorted to support the use of Western discourses in the classroom teaching. The use of FDA and interdisciplinary lenses, along with their critiques and other postcolonial voices, are underexplored in current studies of ELT practices. Therefore, this study extends scholarship in the ELT field and makes a case for exposing lecturers to counter discourses, such as Southern and Islamic discourses, in order for them to be able to critically negotiate or appropriate Western and neoliberal discourses in their teaching practices.</p>
Studies towards the Synthesis of a Heterobimetallic Zirconium Germanium Complex from Imidozirconocenes, Germanimines and Germylenes
Authors:   , Chapple Peter 
Published: November 2021

<p>Early-late transition metal heterobimetallic complexes with direct metal to metal interactions are desirable synthetic targets due to the complementary reactivity of the two different metals present in these compounds. The electron-rich late transition metal (often Rh, Ir, Fe, or Mo), and electron-poor early transition metal create an ideal environment for heterolytic bond cleavage in what is often termed ‘cooperative reactivity’. This project aimed to synthesise a zirconium-germanium heterobimetallic complex based on a known heterobimetallic ligand scaffold; 1. The synthesis of the desired heterobimetallic 1 was attempted using two different synthetic approaches. The first involved the investigating the reactivity between an unsaturated zirconium nitrogen bond (an imidozirconocene) and a germanium(II) source with a lone pair of electrons (known as a germylene). The second approach investigated the reactivity between an unsaturated germanium nitrogen bond (a germanimine) and a zirconium(II) source. In order to have the highest chance of success, a wide range of germanium and zirconium complexes were synthesised. The novel germylenes include [Ge(NAPHTMS)] (NAPHTMS = [1,8-((CH3)3Si)N)2C10H6]) and [Ge(BIANMes)] (BIANMes = [((2,4,6-Me(C6H2)N)2)C12H6)]). These proved to be unreactive towards the imidozirconium species [Cp2Zr(NAr*)(THF)] and [Cp2Zr(NDipp)(THF)] (Ar* = (2,6-(C6H5)2CH)-4-(tBu)C6H2), Dipp = (2,6-((CH3)2CH)C6H3)) as well as other amidozirconocenes. However, within these studies, the mixed coordination germanium species [[Ge(NAPHTMS)Ge(Bu)(NAPHTMS)]-[Li(THF4)]+] and [[Ge(NAPHTMS)Ge(Me)(NAPHTMS)]-[Li(THF4)]+]were synthesised. Density functional theory (DFT) molecular orbital calculations were used to help explain the observed reactivity. With regards to the second approach, routes to new germanimine complexes such as [(HMDS)2Ge(NMes)] ((HMDS) = ((CH3)3Si)2N), Mes = (2,4,6-CH3(C6H3))), were explored, and several methods for generating “Cp2Zr” were examined. Although these conditions proved unsuccessful for generating 1, the reaction between dialkyl zirconocene with azides to form novel zirconocene triazenido complexes was discovered and the sterics affecting the synthesis of new germanimine complexes was investigated.</p>
Local government decision-making - Local government decision-making in New Zealand: An interpretivist inquiry into influences and citizen preferences related to large capital investments
Authors:   , Read Haydn 
Published: November 2021

<p>Citizens’ active participation in local government affairs today is low, and no measurable signs indicate any improvement. To the contrary, evidence suggests citizen participation is deteriorating. Considerable debate has been involved in trying to establish whether its cause is citizenship deficits or democracy deficits. Alternatively, does another, yet-to-be-discovered driver explain the disconnection between local government and its citizens? Of greatest concern is that, in the near future, significant investment decisions and the outcomes they provide are likely to set the tone for our communities for the next 100 years or more. In this context, the diminishing participation may beget further disconnection. Furthermore, if citizens are not really in a position to make an informed decision, who is? Can we be sure those decision-makers are making the right decisions? Has the intent behind our participatory or deliberative democracy in the local government sector established itself in practice, as we might expect? Compounding this challenge is the complexity of the decision-making environment, which only enhances the gap between how citizens sense they are able to participate in these important long-term decisions and the political environments that struggle to find enduring solutions in which citizen preferences are weighted in a way that reflects community expectations. While the literature to date has covered citizenship and democracy deficits in some detail, understanding is more limited of the bureaucratic and representative deficits that are struggling with similar, if not identical issues. This research examines the concept and practice of local government decision-making. Its focus is on the influences that elected members weight in this process, and specifically the weight they give to citizen preferences in making their decisions. Moreover, if these preferences are not being given due weight, what are the implications for our deliberative democracy? And do the findings have any implications for how our communities ought to view the current decision-making environment?</p>