bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Designing and disseminating DIY assistive technology in an online environment
Authors:   , Creagh Thomas 
Published: November 2021

<p>Stroke is a debilitating neurological condition caused by a dysfunction in the flow of blood to the brain (Stroke.org, 2016). The onset of stroke can result in complex disability that may require long term rehabilitation (Duncan, 1994). The deterioration of psychosocial well-being is one of the many issues that may result from the formation of disability in an individual (Aström, 1992). Dunn (2000) defines psychosocial as “how people think and feel about, influence, and relate to actual, imagined, or assumed others”. It is about how our concept of self in influences our relationships with others and vice versa. The purpose of this research is to investigate what in influence digitally connected communities can have on psychosocial recovery from stroke. This will be achieved through the creation of a web application. This web application will expand on the idea of DIY and non-intentional design (Brandes, 2008) and apply it in a rehabilitative manner. Non-intentional design is defined by Brandes (2008, p) as, “the everyday, unprofessional redesign of professionally designed objects. NID results when an object is used in a manner different from the prescribed (and therefore restricted) functional intention or when the prescribed application is not honoured in the new uses”. The intention being that influencing assistive technology use in a positive way can help a person accept disability into their concept of self and help that person to regain confidence to engage with others socially. This research initially canvasses literature reviews (Hanington et al, 2012) to analyze the psychosocial, elderly engagement with web applications, and to develop heuristics to guide the design of the web application. Subsequently, I have used precedent reviews (Hanington et al, 2012) to analyze DIY assistive technology documentation in an online environment. Finally, I utilised a Research through design (Frayling, 1993) approach to inform the creation of this DIY assistive technology and the web application. User testing of the web application was then performed. The testing took the participants through the process of using the web application via a set list of tasks and also asked them to recreate one of the three available DIY assistive technology examples.</p>
Assessing the Accuracy of Performance Modelling in Software Defined Networks
Authors:   , Ansell Jordan 
Published: November 2021

<p>Analytical modelling and experimental measurement can are used to evaluate the performance of a network. Models provide insight and measurement provides realism. For software defined networks (SDN) it is unknown how well the existing queueing models represent the performance of a real SDN network. This leads to uncertainty between what can be predicted and the actual behaviour of a software defined network. This work investigates the accuracy of software defined network queueing models. This is done through comparing the performance results of analytical models to experimental performance results. The outcome of this is an understanding of how reliable the existing queueing models are and areas where the queueing models can be improved.</p>
Concrete Island: Lost Sites and Hidden Heritage
Authors:   , Johnson Zackary 
Published: November 2021

<p>In cities like Auckland, suburban sprawl has led to the introduction of extensive elevated motorways that create barriers and cuts across the ordering elements of the city. Urban planner Roger Trancik refers to the areas beneath and adjacent to these urban motorways as “lost sites”, considered ‘unbuildable’ even though they occur within the central business district. This research investigation looks at how architecture can help return a sense of place identity and cultural significance to otherwise placeless zones defined by elevated urban motorways. The central Auckland site for this design-led research is the Central Motorway Junction (CMJ), commonly referred to as ‘spaghetti junction’ — a site physically and environmentally inappropriate for housing development, but large and high profile enough to contribute significantly to Auckland’s ‘cultural hub’. The proposed programme for this investigation is a new facility to house Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa’s stored collections. Arguably New Zealand’s most valuable cultural holdings, only 3% of Te Papa Tongarewa’s collections are on display at any time. The rest of the museum’s stored collections are completely hidden from public view within its back of house facilities and warehouse structures in Wellington. Due to Wellington’s location on major fault lines, studies are underway to permanently move the stored collections to Auckland, where they will remain removed from the public eye. This design-led research investigation proposes that once these collections are relocated to Auckland, if they are made visually accessible to the public, they could provide a vital extension of the cultural hub for the city centre. The investigation proposes to architecturally inhabit one of Auckland’s most prominent lost sites, the Central Motorway Junction, in a way that celebrates its iconic elevated motorway as a viable urban context capable of actively contributing to urban re-vitalisation and cultural consolidation. The thesis investigation examines the city’s motorway infrastructure as a framework for a new typology for architecture that actively uses the ‘motorway typology’ to establish architectural and place identity. Simultaneously the investigation explores how expansive elevated motorway sites can provide significant footprints for new public buildings to enhance the cultural identity of the urban centre.</p>
Taking the high road: Retrofitting amenity onto urban arterial roads
Authors:   , Dey Paul 
Published: November 2021

<p>Amenity values on urban arterial roads are fraught. This is largely due to the traditional traffic capacity versus amenity trade-off. This trade-off implies that high-capacity roads must be inherently deficient in amenity due to issues of air quality, noise nuisance and the physical barrier of streams of traffic. However, a more nuanced position – and one adopted by this thesis - is that arterial roads can be both busy thoroughfares and active, enjoyable destinations. This design-led research explores retrofitting amenity values onto existing arterial roads, creating new spaces and improving qualities of a system not originally constructed with amenity in mind. Cuba Street in Lower Hutt is a regionally significant connector intended for future densified development. In addition to the current link function, this road needs to become more attractive as a destination and address. Consideration at the urban scale encourages broad, strategic planning to support amenity holistically. This urban planning addresses topics like desirable densification, transit-oriented development, walkable centres and how these affect the arterial road condition. In moving from urban-scaled to architectural design, the detailed implementation of the greater policies is tested. Architecture is engaged to respond to the immediate arterial road conditions with spaces and surfaces, protective buffers and layers. In this way - with architectural refinement and a comprehensive, coherent strategy - traffic capacity and amenity can be brought into balance.</p>
Data-Driven Facial Expression Analysis from Live Video
Authors:   , Tay Wee Kiat 
Published: November 2021

<p>Emotion analytics is the study of human behavior by analyzing the responses when humans experience different emotions. In this thesis, we research into emotion analytics solutions using computer vision to detect emotions from facial expressions automatically using live video. Considering anxiety is an emotion that can lead to more serious conditions like anxiety disorders and depression, we propose 2 hypotheses to detect anxiety from facial expressions. One hypothesis is that the complex emotion “anxiety” is a subset of the basic emotion “fear”. The other hypothesis is that anxiety can be distinguished from fear by differences in head and eye motion. We test the first hypothesis by implementing a basic emotions detector based on facial action coding system (FACS) to detect fear from videos of anxious faces. When we discover that this is not as accurate as we would like, an alternative solution based on Gabor filters is implemented. A comparison is done between the solutions and the Gabor-based solution is found to be inferior. The second hypothesis is tested by using scatter graphs and statistical analysis of the head and eye motions of videos for fear and anxiety expressions. It is found that head pitch has significant differences between fear and anxiety. As a conclusion to the thesis, we implement a systems software using the basic emotions detector based on FACS and evaluate the software by comparing commercials using emotions detected from facial expressions of viewers.</p>
Optimisation and Scope of a Palladium-Catalysed Allylic Alkylation Cascade
Authors:   , Fisk Matthew 
Published: November 2021

<p>The design and development of new chemical reactions is crucial for progress in organic synthesis research. Cascade reactions, involving two or more steps carried out in situ in a single pot, provide a step-efficient and atom-economic route to synthesise polycyclic ring systems. The synthesis of new heterocyclic ring systems provides valuable routes towards complex natural products. Previous work in the Harvey group led to the development of a regioselective palladium-catalysed allylic alkylation (Pd-AA) cascade. This research aims to expand the scope and utility of this existing Pd-AA cascade, by optimising the current reaction conditions and exploring a range of non-symmetric pyran-based bis-electrophiles and nitrogen and sulfur-based β-carbonyl bis-nucleophiles. Isomeric 2,3-unsaturated silyl glycosides based on D-glucose and D-galactose were successfully synthesised. These substrates were assessed as bis-electrophiles in the Pd-AA cascade. The yield of the cascade was successfully optimised with the glucose-derived substrate 4-hydroxy-6-methylpyran-2-one, using Pd₂(dba)₃ and Xantphos, to 87% from the previously reported 77% yield. However, the galactose-derived silyl glycoside formed an undesired pyranone as the major product. Additionally, a series of β-dicarbonyl compounds (4-hydroxy-6-methylpyran-2-one analogues) were assessed as bis-nucleophiles in the Pd-AA cascade, with all of the analogues forming complex mixtures of side products and a fully unsaturated pyranone as the major isolated product.</p>
Stability against movement: An extension of expressional form
Authors:   , Jackson Olivia 
Published: November 2021

<p>This thesis has slowly become a paradox of retrieving information from the frictionless landscape of interconnected objects, through drawing, to develop an analogue methodology in understanding this provocative site at Kumutoto Lane. Making the invisible, visible. The word ‘drawing’ retains a dynamic, energetic & incipient value in which resonates well against the nature of the site. The idea of friction is imperative to both of these concepts, drawing and site, and is why I began my investigation into the abandoned site at Clifton Terrace with pencil and paper. Kumutoto Lane is an example of unfinished built form and I would like to see if I can use this awkward abandonment to express the idea of drawing as a catalyst for architectural design. A poetical expansion to how the road draws a line through the infrastructure that we live in. The site is part of a profound history in relation to the Wellington Urban Motorway and is just a small piece of what was a very large prospective precinct spanning from Ngauranga Gorge through to the the airport, facilitated by what was then the Ministry of Works. In terms of form, the project will generate an architectural reaction providing an ‘office space’ for the abandoned Ministry of Works Department. I have been really cautious to not let the specificness of the site camouflage how I am working on it, essentially appointing the Clifton terrace carpark as a case study. Ideologies of this research assimilated into dynamic forms to flow in and around the existing landscape, avoiding a static solution in which I believe will contradict the nature of the site. It has been crucial to identify a relationship between land and line through out the growth of this research, with an emphasis expressed towards the development of a methodological approach to ensure this was achieved. Methodology has become the veracious backbone to this research.</p>
“I know what that is! It’s modern art!” Early childhood access to and use of art museums and galleries in Aotearoa New Zealand
Authors:   , Terreni Lisa 
Published: November 2021

<p>This thesis examines issues of access to art museums and galleries for young children attending early childhood (EC) centres, the ways in which the EC sector uses the institutions to enhance young children’s learning, and the relationship art museums and galleries have with New Zealand’s youngest citizens. It is the first in-depth study of young children’s use of art museums and galleries in Aotearoa New Zealand. A mixed methods approach to the research involved a range of data gathering tools to observe, document, and analyse the practices and attitudes towards art museum visiting by the EC sector. Key participants were EC teachers, art museum directors, and art museum educators. Rich quantitative and qualitative data were elicited from a national survey of 17 of New Zealand’s largest art museums and galleries, an extensive national online questionnaire to EC centres, and an embedded case study of three EC centres who visited art museums as part of the research. Bourdieu’s key concepts of habitus, cultural capital and, particularly, field provide the fundamental tools for analysis within this inquiry. These have been used to examine and attempt to explain why some EC teachers visit art museums and galleries with young children while others do not, and understand issues of power within the field of art education in an art museum or gallery. The study found that there are both facilitators and barriers to art museum and gallery visiting by the EC sector. Barriers included: funding limitations, teachers’ fears about using art museums and galleries with young children, lack of professional development for teachers, and poor marketing of exhibitions to the EC sector. Facilitators included EC teachers’ positive perceptions of art museums and galleries as places for enriching and extending young children’s visual arts education, visual art pedagogical practices that support visiting, and the willingness of some art museums and galleries to work with the EC sector. On the basis of the findings from all three phases of the research and informed by the literature reviews and the conceptual tools used in the analysis of data, a ‘third space’ for art education in art museums and galleries for young children attending EC centres is proposed.</p>
The Theory of Island Biogeography on the Hawaiki Archipelago
Authors:   , Dinh Khoi 
Published: November 2021

<p>This thesis addresses MacArthur and Wilson‟s Theory of Island Biogeography (1967) on a set of islands around the north-east coast of the North Island of New Zealand. The flora species lists from these islands were obtained from both published and unpublished island surveys whilst Geographical Information Systems (GIS) techniques were utilised in order to calculate the physical geography of islands. These islands were an ideal study site for such research because they display natural gradients in both physical geography as well as native and exotic species richness. The literature on the Theory of Island Biogeography has yet to comprehensively understand the differences between the patterns of exotic richness and native richness. Furthermore, the importance of studies on exotics species is increasingly relevant given the negative effect they have had on native communities worldwide. The results of my research illustrated that there were similar species-area and species-isolation relationships between exotic and native species. These two relationships were also consistent with what is expected under classical island biogeography principles. Interestingly however, I found that distance from the mainland had a stronger negative effect on exotics species. There were a significantly lower proportion of exotics with increasing isolation. This result has applicable outcomes for conservation management on the Hawaiki archipelago. I suggested that weeding effort focus on larger islands and in particular the islands closer to the mainland. Globally, the biogeographical patterns of exotic species are still poorly examined. With insights from this study and other similar research the Theory of Island Biogeography may be an informative approach to dealing with the ominous threat of exotic species.</p>
Songlines: Preserving cultural heritage through architecture
Authors:   , Carr Sheldon 
Published: November 2021

<p>In indigenous Australian culture, the ‘Songlines’ represent the routes across the landscape followed by the original ‘creator-beings’ of the ‘Dreaming’. The ‘Songlines’ describe the locations of mountains, waterholes, ravines, and other landscape features that were ‘created’ by the movements and interactions of the creator-beings. Throughout Australia’s vast history, the indigenous peoples have recited the Songlines as oral narratives for the next generation, while also using the Songlines to navigate across vast tracts of wilderness. But with the departure of a disenfranchised younger generation of indigenous Australians to cities and government settlements, the Songlines are at risk of being forgotten. Songlines are not merely navigation devices. They act as mnemonics that define cultural values, indigenous laws and ancestral heritage. Stories of the ‘Dreaming’ acknowledge the past, present and future. As such, they are capable of re-engaging Indigenous Australians with a sense of place, heritage,and values, that are so menaingful to there culture and religion. The sites for this design-led investigation are located in Arkaroola Sanctuary, Vulkanatha /Gammon Ranges and Ikara-Flinders Ranges - located in South Australia. This vast expanse of land is associated with the indigenous people known as the Adnyamathanha. The principal aim of this investigation is to conceive a series of collaborative architectural shelters that are designed and positioned in ways that can help reawaken, expose, and define characteristics of ‘Songlines’ for future generations. The architecture will act as a reminder of cultural values, while serving as a framing device to reveal the dynamic landscape features that form the Adnyamathanha’s traditional Songlines. This is to safeguard knowledge, and re-awaken awareness of ‘Songlines’ for younger indigenous peoples who have left their homeland and tribal region. The architectural shelters, as points of pause along the Songlines, act as mnemonic devices that help keep alive a vibrant and fundamental sense of cultural identity and place. The architectural interventions seek to diffuse boundaries between Indigenous and Non-Indigenous cultures – given the current integrated context of Australia.</p>
Gitanjali: Song Offerings
Authors:   , Jain Suchita 
Published: November 2021

<p>New Zealand lies on the Pacific Ring of Fire – the belt of vulnerable, unpredictable fault lines which are the primary cause for earthquakes in this country. Most recently, as evident in the aftermath of the 2011 Christchurch earthquake -the destruction of the city centre led to the emergence of sub centres in different parts of the city each with different, desperate needs. The lack of preparedness in the wake of an earthquake hence, exacerbated this destitution. This research explores architecture’s role in the sub-centre. How can architecture facilitate resilience through this decentralised typology? The design-led approach critiques the implications of architecture as a tool for resilience whilst highlighting the desperate need for the engagement of architecture in planning before a disaster strikes. The resulting response explores resilience through an architectural lens that has a wider infrastructural, contextual and user-focussed need.</p>
The authority of fashion: The impact of brand credibility and gender blurring on attitudes towards gendered fashion advertisements
Authors:   , Brownie Daniel 
Published: November 2021

<p>Gender identity is increasingly accepted as a continuum. Consumers feel that they are no longer constrained by the norms of gendered consumptions, so they are expressing themselves and their identities through new purchase behaviours. Gender blurring refers to the crossing of gender boundaries, when masculine and feminine traits are swapped. This has been seen in the fashion industry, where brands are featuring male models in womenswear and vice versa. Despite the increasing usage of gender blurring in fashion campaigns, there is little empirical evidence as to how consumers respond to it. This study attempted to fill this gap in knowledge, investigating how brands that can utilise gender blurring in their advertising without eliciting negative consequences. Brand credibility influences the persuasiveness of advertising, and it is evident within luxury fashion brands and their ability to set fashion trends. In this study, a 3x2x2 between-subjects experimental design was used. Subjects were exposed to a fashion advertisement, featuring either a high- or low-credibility brand (Louis Vuitton or the Warehouse), with a male model wearing stereotyped, androgynous, or gender blurred clothing. The clothing was framed in either a work or casual context. As the purpose of the study was to assess responses irrespective of gender or social class, the sample was made up of adult consumers from New Zealand randomly assigned to experimental conditions. The findings indicate that overall consumers respond more negatively to gender blurring in fashion advertising, and more positively to advertising from a high-credibility brand. Interestingly, no main effect of context was found. The analysis suggests that brand credibility moderates the effect of gender blurring, as consumers exposed to gender blurring by the Louis Vuitton advertisements reported more positive attitudes than those in the Warehouse conditions. This normalising effect contributes to our understanding of cultural authority and the movement of meaning. High credibility brands have an authority over consumer culture, and thus can facilitate the movement of fringe issues, like gender blurring, into the mainstream, fostering wider acceptance. Managerially, marketers should be aware of the potential negative impacts of utilising gender blurring, and understand that brand credibility is an important factor.</p>