bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Defab: Architecture for a Circular Economy
Authors:   , Finch Gerard 
Published: December 2021

<p>Mainstream construction practices result in the production of large quantities of toxic waste at all stages of a building’s life cycle. This can be attributed to widespread adoption of irreversible fixing methods that prioritise rapid assembly, bespoke design practices and the increased use of ‘low-value’ materials. Unprecedented levels of consumption and waste production are set to continue as demand for residential housing in New Zealand grows rapidly. In response to these concerns, this thesis aims to develop innovative construction methods that facilitate the development of a Circular Economy for the building industry. The resulting design proposal is a modular architectural construction system with integrated jointing capacity, redundant expansion potential and details that enable the effective separation of discrete building layers. This proposed assembly specification calls for the mass-standardisation of structural components to promote economically viable material retrieval and resale at the end of a building’s useful life. Computer-aided manufacturing technologies are used to facilitate the incorporation of sophisticated reusable assembly parameters into connection details on a large scale. Analysis of the proposed solution indicates that waste over an entire building’s life can be reduced by more than 94% through the deployment of alternative architectural assemblies. Additionally, optimised assemblies enable deconstruction times to be reduced by up to 30% versus conventional light timber framing.</p>
Advances in Understanding the Sea Ice Floe Size Distribution
Authors:   , Roach Laetitia 
Published: December 2021

<p>Sea ice is a critical component of the polar climate system that is tightly coupled to the ocean and atmosphere. It is highly heterogeneous, composed of discrete floes which range in size across space and time. In this thesis, I use a combination of modelling and observational approaches to investigate how different physical processes determine the distribution of sea ice floe sizes. I construct the first global model that simulates floe sizes arising from the interaction of different physical processes. Floe sizes are modified by lateral melt, lateral growth, freezing together of floes and wave-ice interactions. By grounding process descriptions in underlying physics, observations of individual processes can be used to constrain model parameters. In light of the sparseness of floe size observations, I developed a novel methodology to constrain previously-unobserved floe freezing processes from in-situ observations. Results from global coupled sea ice–ocean model simulations are used to quantify the relative impacts of different processes on spatial and seasonal variability in the floe size distribution, providing hypotheses that could be tested by observational campaigns in the future. Under transient historical forcing, the model suggests that the fragmentation of Arctic sea ice has significantly increased over the satellite era. I also seek to improve understanding of feedbacks between sea ice floe size and the polar climate system. A fragmented ice cover exposes more ice area on the sides of floes to the ocean than sheet ice, promoting lateral melt, which reduces surface albedo. Conducting a statistical analysis of current climate models shows that inclusion of a lateral melt parametrization improves simulation of sea ice concentration relative to observations. However, calculation of lateral melt using the model for prognostic simulation of the sub-grid-scale floe size distribution results in little or no enhancement of lateral melt at a hemispheric scale compared to a simple parametrization, although it is likely to be important at smaller spatial and shorter temporal scales. The new model opens up the possibility of coupling sea ice and ocean surface wave models and of including floe size dependence in other processes, such as form drag, sea ice dynamics, ocean eddies and ocean–atmosphere heat transfer, which may result in significant impacts for polar climate.</p>
Bottling the Colonial Unconscious: Ethical value networks and the commodification of fairness in the South African wine industry
Authors:   , Howson Kelle 
Published: December 2021

<p>The rise of ethical certifications was greeted with optimism by scholars, activists and development practitioners, who predicted they would help to redistribute power and profit more equitably in South-North commodity trade, which has long been an engine of wealth extraction and underdevelopment in the resource periphery. The explicit attachment of value to the social and territorial origin of agro-food products would allow marginalised producers to resist corporate governance, race-to-the-bottom processes, and commodity fetishism. This would result in the retention of higher value at the production end of the chain, thereby fostering sustainable development in rural areas in the Global South. I investigate the extent to which power and profit is indeed redistributed more equitably in these new ‘ethical value networks’, through a case study of the South African wine industry. Complex apparatus of standards-setting, verification and auditing have formed the basis of strategies for post-apartheid transformation, redistribution and development in the South African wine industry, with progress conceptualised as taking place at the level of business. In this context, ethical certification constitutes a contemporary labour relations paradigm which in key ways reproduces ‘colonial unconscious’ discourses derived from the legacies of slavery, apartheid and farm paternalism. These embedded discursive power formations restrict the transformative potential of ethical certification. For ethical development to occur as a result of ethical value network formation, I argue that workers must gain greater agency and regulatory capability in the governance of these networks. I find also that ethical certification has not been an effective economic upgrading strategy for the South African wine industry. Instead, due to their deployment within oligopolistic networks, ethics have become commodified, and subject to neoliberal governance. Northern retailers have used their existing power to accumulate the value created by alignment with ethical conventions, and to avoid the costs. Ethical certifications compound the severe ‘cost-price squeeze’ faced by wine producers. This case study has broader implications for the theory of ethical value networks: showing that they are relational, geographically contingent, and remain susceptible to asymmetric governance and accumulation patterns.</p>
Development and identification of candidate aptamers for growth differentiation factor 9
Authors:   , Robb Orin 
Published: December 2021

<p>Bone morphogenetic protein 15 (BMP15) and growth differentiation factor 9 (GDF9) are oocyte-secreted growth factors that are essential for fertility and ovarian development in many mammalian species. It is hypothesised that the ratios of these growth factors within ovarian follicles are unique to each species and determine litter size in mammals. The current detection method for these proteins is by Western blotting with monoclonal antibodies, however this methodology generates semi-quantitative results at best. Systematic evolution via exponential enrichment (SELEX) is a method involving iterative rounds of affinity maturation. It has been used for generating synthetic DNA- and RNA-based sequences (aptamers) that are capable of recognising a target molecule with high sensitivity. To understand more about the biological functions of BMP15 and GDF9, reliable detection methods need to be developed so these proteins can be measured in biological samples. The generation of aptamers that recognise BMP15 and GDF9 of multiple species could enable a novel detection system to be developed to further explore the role of BMP15 and GDF9 in determining litter size in mammals. In this study, recombinant BMP15 and GDF9 proteins from species that vary in litter size were produced and purified by IMAC and HPLC for aptamer validation. Membrane-SELEX was used to generate candidate aptamers against recombinant human GDF9. After ten rounds of SELEX, seven candidate aptamers were identified and sequenced. Alignment of the sequences revealed a conserved region of 29bp in four of the seven candidate aptamers. These sequences also showed a high (85-90%) guanine/thymine content consistent with G-quadruplex forming aptamers, a tertiary structure that increases specificity to the target molecule. These four sequences also showed homology with that of a previously published aptamer for BMP15. This is interesting as BMP15 and GDF9 are both members of the transforming growth factor beta superfamily and as such, share a high peptide homology suggesting convergent evolution occurred in two unrelated SELEX experiments against related proteins. Whilst time constraints did not allow for characterisation of the resultant GDF9 aptamer candidates, nor their validation using recombinant ovine and mouse GDF9 produced herein, this study showed that GDF9 aptamer candidates were generated by SELEX that exhibited sequence similarities to an aptamer generated against a structurally-related protein.</p>
A Foucauldian Discourse Analysis of an Engineering Programme
Authors:   , Watterson Craig 
Published: December 2021

<p>The extensive literature relating to student barriers within the Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) fields and, in particular, engineering education illustrates that STEM education has a widespread problem in retaining students. A plethora of studies have concentrated on placing the student at the centre of the problem – for example by focusing on student academic ability, work habits and social background. By analysing staff interviews, and investigating pertinent factors from the surrounding institutional, cultural and social environment, I shift the focus away from the phenomenological experience of individuals to examine the way power relations affect the teaching and learning environment. Foucauldian Discourse Analysis (FDA) offers a theoretical and methodological basis for critically exploring networks of power, through the investigation of discourse and can provide insights into the complex situation in the School of Engineering and Computer Science (ECS). I use FDA to ask: how is power experienced and manifested by lecturers in the Bachelor of Engineering with Honours (BE) first-year teaching and learning environment at Victoria University of Wellington (VUW), New Zealand. I do this by analysing transcripts of interviews with teaching staff, as well as ECS, University, and Government documentation. By adopting an FDA approach to lecturers’ experiences of power, situated in the New Zealand neoliberal educational context, I aim to identify issues that impact the teaching and learning environment. These include academic practices relating to Government and University pressure to increase engineering student recruitment and retention numbers, an academically diverse incoming student cohort, course design, teaching and research. From a Foucauldian perspective, the New Zealand Government, the University, its lecturers, and students are all part of an educational setting comprising a complex network of power relationships active in the operation of the teaching and learning environment. By placing lecturers at the epicentre of the situation and by understanding how lecturers both experience and exercise power in the teaching-learning environment, the issue of student retention may be re-framed. This study offers a unique perspective from which we can assess these problematic experiences at the source, whether that be at government, institution, department, teacher or learner level. As such, by exploring the operation of power, this thesis explores an important aspect of the retention problem which has never been fully investigated in NZ engineering education.</p>
Delirious New Zealand
Authors:   , Booth Devon 
Published: December 2021

<p>Delirious New Zealand proposes an alternative parliament, one that uses walls and boundaries to navigate authority and architecture. Walls are complex, they can range from a simple form of protection against elemental conditions, through to the reinforcement of borders between two countries with emphasis and polarising effect. Whilst variable, each instance is committed to division, and both are boundaries facilitated by architecture in the form of walls. Through design led research, three phases of investigation are developed across successive scales. Presented as 'Installing Boundaries', 'Housing Politics' and 'Political Infrastructure', each design outcome forms a larger body of work referred to as the design. Shape, Threshold, and Montage are the architectural principles that determine a given walls significance investigated at each scale. These three speculative propositions are not final outcomes for what an alternative parliament should be. Instead, Delirious New Zealand explores architectural boundaries as the material interface between those who govern and those governed. Koolhaas’s observations of the Berlin Wall – pre-demise – and his publication ‘Delirious New York’ highlight the significance of the authority of an architect, and habitational authority in the realisation and reality of architecture. The significance of a given boundary wall must then consider two things. One, the architectural elements that make up the wall itself. Two, the context within which a wall operates - be that social, political, economic etc. This thesis not only examines the design outcomes as being ‘about architecture’ in the form of the design, but also uses this as a platform to discuss ‘concepts of architecture’ more broadly. Accordingly, the concept of authority and architecture is discussed throughout the production and presentation of the three scales of investigation. A final critique in the form of a design discussion concludes this thesis, at which point the final act of installing boundaries is undertaken. ‘Delirious New Zealand’ considers parliament as a programmatic and contextual provocation for the design of architectural boundaries. In doing so, the segregated inhabitants are defined as the politicians and the people. Although political in programme, this thesis is not politically motivated nor intent on acting politically.</p>
Modelling and Performance Analysis of OpenFlow Switches in Software-Defined Networking
Authors:   , Singh Deepak 
Published: December 2021

<p>Software-Defined-Networking (SDN) simplifies the configuration complexity in the computer communication network by decoupling the control plane from the data plane in a switch. In SDN, the switch has the data plane only and is configured by the logically centralised controller which simplifies the forwarding of packets in the network. However, an SDN switch is sensitive to delay and loss of packets which significantly affects the network performance. This thesis uses queueing theory to conduct modelling and performance analysis of OpenFlow-based SDN switches. OpenFlow is the de-facto protocol for communication between an SDN switch and the controller. Using queueing theory, three aspects of packet processing in an SDN switch are explored. First, the existing research has primarily modelled the output buffer of an SDN switch using two buffer sharing mechanisms: the single shared buffer and the priority buffer. However, the effect of buffer dimensioning in these buffer sharing mechanisms has not been investigated. Buffer dimensioning helps in determining the minimum buffer capacity for a desired loss probability. The research in this thesis shows that the use of priority buffer in an SDN switch reduces the time to update flow tables than the shared buffer but at the cost of a higher buffer capacity. Second, much of the existing research has not investigated the impact of internal buffering of data packets whereby a fraction of a data packet header is sent to the controller instead of an entire data packet. To investigate the impact of internal buffering, the queueing model for an SDN switch with the internal buffer is developed. The investigation shows that at the time of congestion, the internal buffer in an SDN switch improves the network performance with lower delay and lower packet loss. Finally, existing research has focused on a software switch in SDN and very little research has studied the performance of a hardware switch. To characterise the performance of SDN-based hardware and software switches and identify the tradeoffs between them, a unified queueing model has been developed. The unified queueing model is an analytical tool for network engineers to predict delay and packet loss in their SDN deployments. The analysis shows the benefits of a hardware switch over a software switch. These benefits are lower delay and lower packet loss. However, the increasing involvement of the controller reduces the benefit of using a hardware switch, i.e. forwarding packets at the line speed rate. This research guides network designers and analysts in the selection of the shared or buffer model for an SDN switch for their desired Quality of Service (QoS). Furthermore, the developed queueing model for an SDN switch with the internal buffer studies the impact of internal buffering in an SDN switch. Finally, the unified queueing model helps in the selection of a software or hardware switch in SDN.</p>
Use of a zeolite slurry to increase the charge retention of a low-cost aqueous supercapacitor
Authors:   , Devese Samuel 
Published: December 2021

<p>To increase the viability of renewable energy technology, improvements must be made to existing energy storage devices. One such device is the supercapacitor, which is able to store energy like a battery, but with faster charge-discharge times and increased cyclability. The two main factors limiting the widespread use of supercapacitor technology are the high component cost and high rate of self-discharge. In this project, both of these aspects were addressed, and a supercapacitor was successfully constructed using a carbon black slurry containing zeolitic structures with a pore size of 4 Å to accommodate the electrolyte ions of potassium and chloride. Low-cost materials and production methods were used to create a supercapacitor with a measured capacitance of 17.25 F g⁻¹ and a coulombic efficiency of 100% determined by galvanostatic charge-discharge curve measurements.</p>
(Re)Viewing the Other: Gender Subversions in IndoFijian Performances
Authors:   , Shandil Vicky 
Published: December 2021

<p>Cultural performances are more than forms of entertainment and vehicles for conveying social and religious traditions. These acts are political acts that can exceed their role of promulgating hegemonic formations and instead be used to subvert and deconstruct existing social realities. This doctoral research focuses on performances that subvert IndoFijian heteronormative gender(s), namely: performances by female singers of qawwali, a genre of competitive singing historically exclusive to males; and lahanga naach, dances by cross-dressed males in Fiji and in the IndoFijian diaspora in New Zealand. Situated within the interdisciplinary field of Pacific Studies, this research draws upon cultural and gender studies as well as materials and knowledge from and about Pacific and Indian cultures to examine these cultural performances. Concepts such as Butler’s theory of performativity and Hall’s theory of articulation are employed to argue that cultural performances are performative in the sense that they not only depict what already exists, but initiate and materialise what can be. This argument is discussed and illustrated through both ethnographic and historical engagement and research methods, interweaving transcriptions of performances with relevant academic literature and oral history interviews of performers as well as cultural experts represented by community leaders, academics and gender activists. This dissertation begins by discussing the idea of a liminal other in relation to ethnic and gender identities and establishes the liminal other’s position in the overarching argument of this research. This is followed by detailed descriptions and analysis of qawwali and lahanga naach, respectively, in accordance with an additional research objective of documenting and creating archival records for these two performance genres. The latter part of the dissertation returns to themes of gender subversion, hegemony and performativity, discussing examples of the real-life implications of embodying liminal identities. The dissertation concludes by emphasising the need for more research on performance cultures in the Pacific and draws attention to how individual agency can promote social change and impact meaning-making mechanisms of social groups through the means of cultural performance. Importantly, this research presents an alternative outlook on the gendered understandings of IndoFijians by including the voices of the disadvantaged who occupy liminal spaces in society.</p>
Paleoenvironmental analysis of early Eocene marl and limestone alternations from Mead Stream, New Zealand
Authors:   , Peñafiel Bermudez Sonja 
Published: December 2021

<p>This study integrates paleonotology and geochemistry to provide a paleoclimatic analysis of cyclic sedimentation in the Lower Marl at Mead Stream in Marlborough, Aotearoa/New Zealand. The alternating marl and limestone bedding in this outcrop coincide with the warmest period in the Paleogene, the Early Eocene Climatic Optimum (EECO). An acetic acid leaching method was refined and used successfully to extract microfossils from the indurated limestones and marls from two intervals of the Lower Marl. The technique resulted in foraminiferal tests with improved surface ornament in comparison with samples that were processed using standard washing methodology. The resulting paleontological assessment of leached foraminiferal and radiolarian assemblages coupled with XRF and stable isotope analysis revised the position and detailed the faunal response to the J hyperthermal at the initiation of the EECO. Microfossil assemblages and carbon isotopic data suggest that the J carbon isotopic excursion (CIE) may be a two-stage event. A new L-3 CIE and possible hyperthermal event was identified within the body of the EECO. Both the J and L-3 events contained acmes where Morozovella made up a quarter of the planktic foraminiferal specimens, suggesting the southern expansion of subtropical waters. Fluctuations of Acarinina and Subbotina foraminifera coinciding with the marl and limestone alternations may indicate climate cycles within these hyperthermals.</p>
Rehabilitating Healthcare: Therapeutic Landscapes as a Catalyst for Health, Well-being and Social Equity
Authors:   , Kershaw Chelsea 
Published: December 2021

<p>Aotearoa New Zealand is a society with inequality deeply embedded in its culture, and this translates to the health of vulnerable members of the community. In its current state, healthcare infrastructure and rehabilitative landscapes are isolated from one another, creating physical and mental barriers for achieving well-being. Therapeutic landscape research suggests outdoor spaces can facilitate rehabilitative healing, community support, and self-empowerment. This form of preventive and rehabilitative health may bridge the gap between treatment at the institutional level, and day-to-day living, to better support the well-being, of people in transition. The under-utilized interface between the residential landscape and Kenepuru Community Hospital in Porirua is used as a design case study, for testing how hospital infrastructure, residential housing, and therapeutic landscapes may coexist for mutually beneficial health and well-being outcomes. Results suggest that careful design of the interstitial spaces bridging housing with healthcare can form an important service for the well-being of vulnerable people.</p>