bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Studies in New Zealand Oligocene and Miocene Plant Macrofossils
Authors:   , Holden Aline Mary 
Published: November 2021

<p>Assemblages of fossil leaves ranging in age from Upper Oligocene to Upper Miocene or Lower Pliocene have been examined from localities in Southland, Central Otago, the Dunedin area, the Buller region and Great Barrier Island. Nearly 200 form taxa have been recognized so far; of these 52 are figured and described and the remainder are included in an illustrated catalogue. Conifers, Casuarinaceae and Nothofagus spp. are discussed in detail. Thirteen new species are named and described: Gleichenia southlandica, Hypolepis maruiensis, Blechnum maruiense, Dacrydium (Lagarostrobos) franklinoides, Microcachrys imbricata, Phyllocladus strictus, Libocedrus compressa, Nothofagus southlandica, Gymnostoma stellata, Gymnostoma crassa, Casuarina avenacea, Metrosideros diffusoides and ? Eucalyptus roxburghiensis. Six new species are described but not named as more detailed study is still proceeding. A further ten new form taxa are identified to genus level only. The fossil flora from the Kaikorai Valley, Dunedin, originally described by Oliver (1936) is revised and Blechnum proceroides, Nothofagus pinnata, N. australis, N. kaikoraiensis and Ripogonum latipetiolatum are new names arising from this revision. The fossil assemblages from Southland and Central Otago are derived from heath, swamp and forest communities developed on an early to mid Tertiary peneplain. In contrast the fossil floras of the Buller region reflect predominantly forest vegetation developed on young soils of a prograding coastal floodplain backed by rapidly rising fault block ranges, while the fossil floras of Dunedin and Great Barrier Island reflect vegetation periodically affected by volcanic activity. Late Oligocene and Miocene climates throughout New Zealand appear to have been humid and at least as warn as Auckland today, although conditions on the east coast of the South Island may have been cooler and drier than on the west. The sediment containing the Landslip Hill fossil flora is interpreted as a silcrete and resembles similar deposits in Australia. The uncompressed state of the fossils and the preservation of turgid cell structures indicates early silica cementation in a surface or near-surface environment, probably as a result of direct precipitation of silica from ground water. The present-day New Zealand flora appears to be derived in part from the late Cretaceous flora of coastal eastern Gondwanaland. Other south-west Pacific floras may stare a similar origin, and may also have contributed to the New Zealand flora following fragmentation of the continental margin. The distribution of New Zealand Tertiary plants, as far as it is known, is consistent with my inferred paleogeography.</p>
Case Examination of Teacher-Tailored Student Evaluation of Teaching Augmented with Peer Observation of Teaching in a Vietnamese University
Authors:   , Nguyen Phuong 
Published: November 2021

<p>This study explored how teacher-tailored student evaluation of teaching (TT-SET) augmented with peer observation of teaching (POT) impacted on academics’ pedagogical reasoning in a Vietnamese university. The qualitative case study within the constructivist paradigm used multiple data collection methods. Detailed analysis developed findings through descriptions of individual academics’ experience of the intervention and analysis across participants (using thematic analysis). The intervention encouraged academics to reflect on their practice. This reflection promoted changes in their understandings of practice, actions to refine practice, future plans, and other outcomes (e.g., enhanced confidence, self-efficacy, sense of autonomy, and collegiality). However, there were several challenges which varied among the participants, including perceiving TT-SET as lacking reliability and validity, limited learning from junior peers, disagreement with feedback and lack of sensitivity, and limited time for POT and changes. The findings also suggested that among other factors, the nature of the peer relationship, which is under the impact of the Vietnamese Confucian collectivist culture, was important to successful implementation of the intervention. The theoretical framework developed for this study helps explain the changes in academics’ pedagogical reasoning, particularly reflection. The study contributes to the area of tertiary teacher development, both theoretically and practically. It offers insights into how such an approach may be effective, particularly in the context of Vietnamese higher education, and provides guidance for both practice and policies. It identifies what needs to be done to improve the implementation of the intervention. It also offers ideas for leaders to make institutional policies to support academics’ professional learning and development. Its findings contribute to understanding how the intervention works, and why it works in the Vietnamese context and also of academics’ reflection and reflective practice. The study includes recommendations for the use of TT-SET augmented with POT for promoting teacher reflection that may lead to changes in practice by addressing necessary conditions for the intervention to be effective. Further research is recommended into the nature of the peer relationship and the characteristics of the peer for POT (e.g., in terms of age, experience, gender, and discipline), the impact of contextual factors, the role of leaders in creating the culture of the learning community, the timing of the intervention, and the use of students’ learning outcomes to evaluate the effectiveness of changes.</p>
Paths to the Market: Distribution Channels for Community-Based Tourism. A Case Study of Banteay Chhmar CBT, Cambodia
Authors:   , Nhem Sochea 
Published: November 2021

<p>This study is to investigate the structure of distribution channels for community-based tourism (CBT) in Banteay Chhmar commune. It explores the factors influencing the distribution channel structure and then examines and discusses the implications of these factors as a means to help improve CBT sales. This study takes both the demand and supply side perspectives into account in order to understand the issues being investigated more comprehensively. Taking a case study approach, this study is based on in-depth interviews with the community and other relevant key channel members, and a survey is employed to collect information from visitors to the community. The examination of the distribution channel structure for CBT reveals considerable channel diversity. The Banteay Chhmar community is found to utilize a distribution mix which includes a wide range of both direct and indirect channels to enable them to reach broader markets. The findings suggest that the CBT direct distribution channel is relatively short and straightforward while the indirect distribution channels are rather diverse and lengthy. Given the diversity of intermediaries involved, indirect distribution channels for the CBT are complex and often multi-levelled. The majority of visitors who travel to the community purchase their packages through ground travel operators making indirect distribution more prevalent in the CBT distribution structure. The study also reveals that there is very limited connection among local channel members, such as, accommodation providers, transportation service providers and souvenir shops. This limitation inhibits CBT product sales. Regarding the domestic market, (mainly school groups), the findings show that the direct channel is more prevalent. There are a number of factors that influence the structure of the distribution channels for CBT. These include commissionable products, product characteristics and market access, information communication and technology, partnership issues and the nature of the operators, capacity issues, and lastly, but most importantly market trends. This study identifies several implications for the Banteay Chhmar community. However, growth (increased sales volume), looks promising if the community develop sound distribution strategies and implement them accordingly; essentially bringing the community and the market together. In addition, the strategies could also help the community to have more control over the development process and opportunity to minimize adverse impacts.</p>
Identifying Human Host Cell Protein Targets of the Bartonella Effector Protein (Bep) Fic Domains
Authors:   , Trounson Vaughan 
Published: November 2021

<p>The genus Bartonellae represents an increasing number of emerging bacterial pathogens that utilises an unusual infection strategy, parasitising the red blood cells of their mammalian host. The most common species to infect humans are B. henselae and B. quintana. B. henselae is transmitted between cats by the cat flea, although occasionally infects humans via cat scratches or bites, causing cat-scratch disease (CSD). CSD is characterised by enlarged tender lymph nodes and fever. B. henselae also infects the endothelial cells of both its hosts; likely a factor in disease progression. B. quintana, the cause of trench fever during WWI, is spread people by the body louse. Trench fever is characterised by relapsing fever, headache, and bone pain. B. quintana is also able to infect human endothelial cells. These bacteria secrete a range of Bartonella effector proteins (Beps) via a Type IV secretion system, directly into endothelial cells, subverting host cell processes and resulting in internalisation of the bacteria. Beps have a range of functions, many of which are not fully characterised. B. henselae secretes three Beps (BepA-C) that contain a filamentation induced by cAMP (Fic) domain and a Bartonella Intracellular Delivery (BID) domain, with BepA being the best studied. BepA’s BID domain is responsible for intracellular delivery as well as inhibition of apoptosis by the host cell, however the exact function of the Fic domain remains unknown. Fic-containing bacterial toxins catalyse the transfer of an AMP moiety from ATP onto a host cell protein. This AMPylation frequently inactivates these proteins resulting in disrupted host cell processes and cytotoxicity. BepA has previously been shown to possess AMPylation activity, although the host target protein(s) are unknown. Evidence suggests that these proteins are novel targets. The aim of this study was to create protein constructs containing these Fic domains, and to develop techniques to identify the host cell target proteins post AMPylation. To this end, both a fluorescent ATP analogue and a fluorescent click chemistry based approach were utilised. While no target protein was identified, a basic methodology was developed for protein production and target protein identification that could be further developed.</p>
State of Flux: Rescuing Nelson's Waterfront
Authors:   , Macquet Jason 
Published: November 2021

<p>The neglected coastal edge of the port landscape has left behind unreceptive scars on the city’s urban fabric. These prominent locations are pivotal links between coastal towns and the sea; they are currently in very poor condition.¹ This thesis explores a site with these characteristics, Nelson, nestled between the Southern Alps at the top of New Zealand’s South Island. The compact and intimate geography of the Nelson region is surrounded by the ocean; with the city growing central to its port. Due to the once thriving local exports and industrial trade the port hastily expanded, the inevitable decline of the industrial era has resulted in a landscape of disregard which has distanced the city from the water. These neglected waterfront locations now taint the pristine image of the Nelson Haven. This thesis examines how a carefully considered architectural design can reintegrate this pivotal location back into the city’s urban fabric while reinforcing the relationship between the people of Nelson and the water. This design-led research utilises the sport of rowing with its link to the water as the catalyst to reconnect the people of Nelson to the waterfront and the water itself. This design-led thesis employs the ideologies of atmospheric experiences to materialise the importance of water to sense of place. This is achieved by exploiting the atmospheric experiences of material, space and time through an architectural dialogue with the water’s duality. The Nelson Haven experiences vast tidal movements which forms the foundations for the experience observed at the interface of architecture and water. This thesis further argues that this framework of architectural experience has the potential to serve as a catalyst project to rejuvenate and reintegrate the city of Nelson with its prime waterfront location. ¹ “Rutherford & Trafalgar Parks & Maitai Walkway” Nelson City Council. accessed July 15, 2015. http://nelson.govt.nz/assets/Leisure/Downloads/R-and-T-parks-redevelopment.pdf.</p>
The Evolution of Evolutionary Explanations of Culture: How and Why Can a Critical Evaluation of Costly Signalling Theory Enhance Our Understanding of Cultural Practices?
Authors:   , Searfoss Amy Elizabeth Robertson 
Published: November 2021

<p>In the last two decades, evolutionary explanations of cultural practice have become prevalent within the social sciences and humanities, including religious studies. This thesis is a critical analysis and recension of one of these applications of evolutionary theory to cultural practice. Specifically, I analyse a secondary case study to investigate the explanatory power and politico-ethical considerations that arise from the application of costly signalling theory to Māori tā moko. Utilising primary and secondary source materials, this research was conducted within an interpretivist and inductive qualitative framework with the aim of offering a reflexive critique of the explanatory power that costly signalling theory carries for tā moko and, more broadly, of the illustrative efficacy of evolutionary explanations when applied to indigenous cultural practices. In a critique of the Cisco case study, I identify some of the more general, global deficiencies of evolutionary explanations of culture and explore the rich, indigenous narrative complexes which shape understandings of Māori tā moko. I maintain that the argument for moko as a costly signal, based, in part, upon Māori warfare is a reiteration of mythologised aspects of Māori culture which divorces tā moko from its ontological and epistemological underpinnings. In separating it from its Māori context, the reflexivity of tā moko is denied and Westernised and colonised conceptions of tā moko which etically view Māori cultural practice through a veil of alterity are perpetuated. In response to the concerns the application of costly signalling theory to tā moko generates, I propose an alternative model: transmissive assemblage. Drawing from actor-network theory, indigenous ontological perspectivism, and Kaupapa Māori, the transmissive assemblage model provides a symmetrical and decolonised framework which both challenges and enhances the dominant Western scientific paradigms used to explain indigenous practices. By focussing on the interactions between agents and the associations which circulate between them, rather than on the agents themselves, this integrative model makes an original contribution to scholarship in allowing the emergence of heteroglossia and by providing a balanced platform for indigenous voices and emic perspectives to be represented in the context of Western scientific research. In doing so, I argue that integrative, reflexive, and decolonised approaches to indigenous cultural practice which focus on process, as opposed to agency, enhance the explanatory power of evolutionary explanations by affording indigenous groups the opportunity to assert their own agency within the paradigm of Western science.</p>
Palaeomagnetic secular variation recorded by lavas from the Taupo Volcanic Zone, New Zealand
Authors:   , Greve Annika 
Published: November 2021

<p>In order to understand the origin, temporal behaviour and spatial characteristics of Earth’s magnetic field, globally distributed records of the palaeomagnetic direction and absolute palaeointensity are required. However a paucity of data from the southern hemisphere significantly limits the resolution of global field models, particularly on short time-scales. In this thesis new, high quality palaeomagnetic data from volcanic materials sampled within the Taupo Volcanic Zone, New Zealand are presented, with a focus on the Tongariro and Okataina Volcanic Centre. New palaeomagnetic directions were obtained from 19 andesitic or rhyolitic lavas, of which 10 also produced successful palaeointensity results. Palaeointensity experiments were conducted using a combination of traditional Thellier-type thermal, and microwave techniques. Detailed magneto-mineralogical investigations carried out alongside these experiments helped to characterise the primary remanence carriers and to justify the reliability of the results. The study also revises the age controls and results from earlier palaeomagnetic studies on Holocene volcanic materials from the area. All new or revised data are summarized into a new data compilation for New Zealand, which includes 24 directions and ten palaeointensities dated between 1886 AD and 15,000 yrs BP. The new directional data reproduces the features of the most recently published continuous record from Lake Mavora (Fiordland, New Zealand), although with directions ranging in their extremes from 321° (west) to 26° (east) declination and -82 to -49° in inclination, the discrete dataset describes somewhat larger amplitude swings. With few exceptions, the new palaeointensity dataset describes a steady increase in the palaeointensity throughout the Holocene, from 37.0 ± 5.7 μT obtained from a pre-8 ka lava to 70.6 ± 4.1 μT from the youngest (≤ 500 yrs BP) flows sampled. A similar trend is also predicted by the latest global field model pfm9k. Furthermore, the data falls within the range of palaeointensity variation suggested by the Mavora record. The dataset roughly agrees with a global VADM reconstruction in the early Holocene (> 5000 yrs BP), but yields values significantly above the global trend in the late Holocene (< 1000 yrs BP) which supports the presence of significant non-dipolar components over the SW Pacific region in the time period, visible in global field models and from continuous PSV records. A comparison of the directional records with the Mavora Curve provided refinement of age estimates of five lava flows from the Tongariro Volcanic Centre, from uncertainties in the range of 2-3000 years. The new palaeomagnetic emplacement age estimates for these flows have age brackets as short as 500 years and thus highlight different phases of the young cone building eruptive activity on Ruapehu volcano.</p>
Communicating a Culture of Peace in Aotearoa New Zealand: The vision of Peace through Unity
Authors:   , Paterson Meredith 
Published: November 2021

<p>Narrative politics reframes how we cultivate knowledge in the academy, foregrounding the voices of research subjects and their relationships with researchers to re-embed scholars in the social world. Narrative affects the reader’s emotional capacities and fosters empathic understanding, encouraging a more human engagement with figures that have been made threatening, as Elizabeth Dauphinée explores in The Politics of Exile and Richard Jackson in Confessions of a Terrorist. Narrative politics is concerned with the question of how academics respond to the violence of war and whether the analytical tools of the social sciences are an adequate response to the human horror of war. The narratives of peace people are particularly compelling in the way they challenge the assertions of the dominant culture of wider society and the discipline of IR. Aotearoa New Zealand has a rich history of grassroots peace movements and activities that have influenced wider society. However, their stories are not well recorded in the dominant narrative of state institutions or academia. Peace Activist Elsie Locke published Peace People, a broad historical survey of peace activism from pre-European Maori to 1975. Maire Leadbeater brings the account up to 2013 in Peace, Power and Politics. All accounts emphasise that ordinary people were at the heart of activities, organisations and movements for peace. One of these ‘ordinary’ people left out of Locke and Leadbeater’s accounts is Gita Brooke, co-founder of the Whanganui-based charitable trust, Peace through Unity [PTU]. As a self-identified ‘peace person,’ Brooke has written much about their work and been involved in peace activities in Aotearoa NZ since the 1980s. Narrative politics provides a lens in IR to explore the story of Gita Brooke as co-founder of PTU. I show the contribution PTU has made and continues to make to a culture of peace in Aotearoa New Zealand and as a worldwide network, explored through the themes of education for global citizenship, transformation through thought-work, and responsibility for local action. It examines how PTU’s vision of a culture of peace has been communicated through the organisation’s newsletter, Many to Many, through its involvement with the United Nations as an accredited NGO, and through its local activities. Using archival sources, data from interviews and a content analysis of the newsletter, and complemented by the lens of and insights from the discourse of narrative politics, this study suggests that PTU provides a space for critical self-reflection in the pursuit of peace that challenges the thought/action binary of institutionalised NGOs. The deterritorialised publication, Many to Many, connects peace people through a networked area of mutual agreement that is inclusive, educative and transformative.</p>
Revitalising the Heart: Addressing the vacant CBD of Rotorua
Authors:   , Dittmer Zakary 
Published: November 2021

<p>The issue of abandoned retail stores is one that is evident throughout the country and at different scales throughout the world. The appearance leaves main streets and central business districts’ looking tired and run down and does little to benefit the local economy. The rise and demand of international retail corporations in provincial cities, has transformed inner city infrastructure. This combined with suburban sprawl has resulted in high building vacancies and poor community moral. Looking to new theories around Urban Interior Architecture, this research explores the boundary between internal and external design methods and pushes for a merger of the design disciplines to create a coherent spatial context. In order to repopulate the city, human focused design methods are explored to encourage social interactions, commercial activity and habitation of the many vacant sites. Through the use of site-specific design, Rotorua will be investigated to understand the reasoning for the abandoned stores and will look to the urban context to identify potential remedies to solve the neglect. The identity of Rotorua its Placemaking and Cultural Heritage of its people will inform the design response to bring the community back into the heart of the central city.</p>