bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
The Hydrological Viability of Te Harakiki Wetland, Waikanae
Authors:   , Law Rebecca Anne 
Published: November 2021

<p>Wetlands are unique natural resources that play an important role in the hydrological cycle. There is a dynamic link between wetland hydrology and inputs from both surface and groundwater resources. Shallow groundwater abstraction near the Te Harakiki wetland at Waikanae has the potential to impact on the wetland' hydrosystem. To assess the likelihood of this occurring, a detailed analysis of recent changes, the hydrological regime, and the water balance of the Te Harakiki Wetland system was undertaken. The hydrological regime of the wetland system was assessed by various monitoring sites established around Te Harakiki to measure rainfall, soil moisture, surface and groundwater levels. Analysis of (decadal) historical aerial photographs allowed changes in spatial extent of the open water habitat (lagoon) and the urban area of Waikanae Beach. Comparisons were made between wetland extent, population increase and urban area expansion. These data, together with a simple water balance, and historical climatic records, were used to explain the drastic decrease in wetland extent. Climatic factors and goundwater are the major driving forces behind the wetland's hydrologic regime. The surface water outflow from the system is greater than the surface water inflow, but this may be affected by the tides. The surface and groundwater systems in the area are closely linked. They have similar responses to rainfall events. Groundwater abstraction in the area appears to have minimal impact on the water level within the wetland. The exact nature and extent of abstraction around the wetland is unknown. The reduction in flood pulsing as a result of channel modification, and the fragmentation of the area for the construction of the oxidation ponds are the likely explanation. The current restoration efforts in regard to controlling pest species and excluding stock from the wetland have halted the decline in wetland area. The future of the Te Harakiki wetland system is now more positive.</p>
Lighting Up: the Social History of Smoking in New Zealand c.1920-1962
Authors:   , Johnston Susie 
Published: November 2021

<p>The period 1920-1962 saw a significant increase in tobacco consumption in New Zealand. This period was one in which there was an expansion of the tobacco industry, tobacco consumers and smoking as a part of modern society. Smoking became an increasingly popular, prevalent and sociable habit, emerging as an integral part of twentieth-century life. Through this period smoking was uncontroversial and was often considered healthy. In 1962 London's Royal College of Physicians (RCP) released the findings of their report Smoking and health, culminating over a decade of health research. In 1964 the United States Surgeon General's report Smoking and health produced similar findings. The reports proved conclusive links between smoking and lung cancer as well as other negative health effects of the use of tobacco. Though the reports were clear, their reception by New Zealanders did not lead to an immediate reduction in smoking - rates remained high until the mid-1970s and declined thereafter. By 1990 the rate of tobacco consumption per adult head of population had returned to 1920 levels. This thesis examines the rise in tobacco consumption from the 1920s to the release of the RCP's report in 1962. Prior to the inclusion of a smoking question in the New Zealand Census of Populations and Dwellings in 1976, no survey data was collected showing any systematic evidence as to who was smoking in New Zealand. The overall historical pattern discovered in this study fits within an international historiography while at the same time revealing some distinctive features of a pattern of consumption and local expression of smoking culture in New Zealand. This study draws on advertising, ephemera, photographs and other visual sources in order to describe the upward trend in tobacco consumption. The study reveals that industry and government efforts to develop and protect a domestic tobacco industry were major contributors to the rise in availability and affordability of smoking over this period, despite an ongoing negotiation over tobacco's status as a luxury or essential item. The commercial impetus of the tobacco industry, expressed through widespread and targeted advertising, was the major driver through this period, propelling the temporal, spatial and gendered expansion of smoking throughout New Zealand society. This study examines, in particular, the ways that advertisers promoted the many and varied promises or functions of smoking in the smoking spaces and activities of leisure, work and war. Alongside the rising prevalence and popularity of smoking, knowledge of the health or other risks around smoking were contradictory and limited and as such there was a marked absence of anti-smoking rhetoric through the period 1920-1962. Rather, prompted by the constant and pervasive images and messages in advertising, New Zealanders expressed their 'right' to smoke across time and space.</p>
The Development of African History as a Discipline in the English-Speaking World: a Study of Academic Infrastructure
Authors:   , Watterson Craig 
Published: November 2021

<p>This thesis examines the infrastructure behind the academic discipline of African History. By looking at government reports, a selection of reflective essays and memoirs written by key historians, and the key precolonial sources that have driven select studies, my thesis explains how African History emerged in British and U.S. universities. Key factors include the English colonisation of Sierra Leone in 1787, the affiliation of Fourah Bay College with the University of Durham in 1876, and the creation of universities in 1948 in Nigeria, Sudan, Uganda and Ghana. In Britain, the importance of African territories resulted in a series of influential reports that shifted missionary controlled education on the African continent to colonial government control. After 1945 a series of pivotal government reports established the impetus and funding for the academic institutionalisation of African History in the United Kingdom. The influence of an English academic recognition of African History provided a transnational current of ideas that flowed between Africa and the United Kingdom, and from there to the United States. With the advent of the Cold War the United States recognised the importance of developing Area Studies programmes, including African Studies, and during the 1960s and 1970s became world leaders in the field. Crucial to this development was the role of pioneering historians who travelled to Africa to teach and research, and who then returned to train a new generation of Africanists. Africanist scholars, recognising the importance of African agency, expanded the shape of the discipline through investigation of oral sources and reexamination of extant pre1800 European written records. 'Charter historians' established university programmes that would produce scholars with the necessary skills required to sustain the new discipline. The infrastructure that undergirded and positioned African History in the mainstream of academia is analysed indepth, and is, as such, the central theme of this thesis.</p>
Rigorous Bounds on Transmission, Reflection, and Bogoliubov Coefficients
Authors:   , Boonserm Petarpa 
Published: November 2021

<p>This thesis describes the development of some basic mathematical tools of wide relevance to mathematical physics. Transmission and reflection coefficients are associated with quantum tunneling phenomena, while Bogoliubov coefficients are associated with the mathematically related problem of excitations of a parametric oscillator. While many approximation techniques for these quantities are known, very little is known about rigorous upper and lower bounds. In this thesis four separate problems relating to rigorous bounds on transmission, reflection and Bogoliubov coefficients are considered, divided into four separate themes: Bounding the Bogoliubov coefficients; Bounding the greybody factors for Schwarzschild black holes; Transformation probabilities and the Miller-Good transformation; Analytic bounds on transmission probabilities.</p>
Chaucer's Solar Pageant: an Astrological Reading of the Canterbury Tales
Authors:   , Carpenter Garth astrologer 
Published: November 2021

<p>This thesis proposes a correlation between the twenty-four Canterbury Tales and an external ordered system, namely the twelve signs of the zodiac, from which one might infer Chaucer's intended ordering of the Tales. While it is generally acknowledged that the Tales contain much astrological material, the radical suggestion here is that Chaucer wrote them as a means of fulfilling his intention, expressed in A Treatise on the Astrolabe, to write a fifth part of that Treatise, in which be would explain to his ten-year old son, Lewys, the principles of astrology. The zodiac comprises twelve signs expressed as six binary oppositions throughout nature. In creating the Canterbury Tales, the thesis claims, Chaucer employed in each Tale two of those binary oppositions, a quadratic structure, to express the interplay of tensions between its main characters. The zodiacal signs symbolise parts of the human body which serve as metaphors of human characteristics according to an astrological medical melothesia that was commonplace in medieval times. The melothesia thus acts as a code, enabling Chaucer to covertly communicate sophisticated astrological knowledge whilst presenting it simplistically to political and royal court contemporaries who would have formed the bulk of his readership. Chaucer makes two rounds of the zodiac, starting with the Knight's Tale aligned with Aries (the head) replete with pagan astrological practices, completing the sequence with the Parson's Tale, aligned with Pisces (the feet), in which the pilgrims are exhorted to save their souls by repentance. The consistency with which the Tales in sequence give an emphasis to characteristics believed in the Middle Ages to be representative of the zodiacal sequence of signs is claimed to provide substantive evidence in support of one particular ordering of the Tales.</p>
Characterisation of a Novel Nitrogen-Fixing, Polyhydroxyalkanoate-Producing Bacterium, Novosphingobium Nitrogenifigens Y88T
Authors:   , Smit Anne-Marie 
Published: November 2021

<p>The novel sphingomonad Novosphingobium nitrogenifigens Y88T (Y88T) is an obligate aerobe able to grow in nutrient-imbalanced environments where nitrogen is naturally limiting, but carbon is found in abundance. Due to its ability to fix atmospheric nitrogen and produce the bioplastic polyhydroxyalkanoate (PHA), Y88T is well-suited for growth in a nitrogenlimited but carbon-enriched environment. Because of these metabolic abilities, Y88T is of interest as a model organism for PHA production unconstrained by nitrogen-limiting conditions. Growth profiles and PHA production profiles were determined for Y88T under conditions of carbon enrichment, nitrogen sufficiency and depletion to investigate carbon and nitrogen utilisation as well as PHA production in this organism. Also, since the nitrogenase enzyme required for nitrogen fixation is oxygen labile, the effect of DO concentration and the relationship between aerobic metabolism and the nitrogen-fixing and PHA-producing abilities of Y88T was investigated. This study demonstrated: that glucose is the preferred growth substrate for Y88T; that no direct relationship exists between nitrogen fixation and PHB accumulation in Y88T; that Y88T can reliably produce in excess of 80 % of its dry weight as polyhydroxybutyrate (PHB), a type of PHA, from glucose under nitrogenlimiting conditions. Proteomic signatures were determined for the various physiological responses of Y88T to growth, nitrogen utilisation, PHB production and exposure to different levels of DO. More than 250 unique proteins, including the core nitrogen-fixation, PHB-synthetic and glycolytic proteins were identified. Y88T apparently converts glucose to PHB via three interrelated glucose catabolic pathways and proteins likely involved in these pathways were identified. This study revealed that, regardless of growth conditions and despite decreased abundance of the Y88T nitrogenase enzyme, growth and PHB synthesis were not inhibited at DOhigh concentrations. Proteomic characterisation of the Y88T phasin, a PHA granule-associated protein, iii identified an amino-terminal, low complexity alanine and proline rich segment found only in other sphingomonads. The expression level of the Y88T phasin correlated well with PHB yields, suggesting the use of this protein as a biomarker to optimise PHB yield in a production environment. Y88T has the potential to be a useful production strain in pure culture, utilising its natural and robust propensity to metabolise glucose to preferentially produce PHB. Targets for biotechnological improvement and the potential for application of Y88T to biofuel production are discussed.</p>
Lithospheric Shortening and Ductile Deformation in a Back-Arc Setting: South Wanganui Basin, New Zealand
Authors:   , Ewig Erik 
Published: November 2021

<p>South Wanganui Basin (SWB), New Zealand, is located behind the southern end of the Hikurangi subduction system. One of the most marked geophysical characteristics of the basin is the -150 mGal Bouguer/isostatic gravity anomaly. Sediment fill can only partly explain this anomaly. 3-D gravity models show that the gravity anomaly associated with the basin is generally consistent with a downwarp model of the entire crust. However, the downwarp of the Moho has to be 3-4 times larger than the downwarp of the sediment-basement interface to fit the observed gravity anomaly. Hence a model of lithospheric shortening where ductile thickening of the crust increases with depth is proposed. Finite element modelling demonstrates that the crust, in order to produce the ductile downwarp, is best modelled with at least two distinct different layers. The model requires the top 15-20 km of the crust to behave purely elastic and the lower part (10 km thick) to be viscoelastic with a viscosity of 10[to the power of 21 pascal-seconds]. The existence of this ductile lower continental crust can be explained due to fluids released from the subducting slab accumulating in the lower crust. This is supported by receiver function analysis results. These results propose a 10+/-2 km thick low S-wave velocity layer in the lower crust. The vertical loading necessary to create the basin is high (up to 200MPa) and is difficult to explain by slab pull forces transmitted via a strongly coupled subduction interface alone. An additional driving mechanism proposed is a thickened mantle lithosphere inducing normal forces on the base of the crust. However, the exact origin of the basin remains a puzzling aspect. Receiver function analysis shows that the crust of the subducting Pacific plate underneath the mainland in the lower North Island is abnormally thick ([approximates]10 km) for oceanic crust. This matches with results from the 3-D gravity modelling. Further features discovered with the receiver function analysis are an up to 6 km thick low-velocity layer on top of the slab, which is interpreted as a zone of crushed crustal material with subducted sediments. Furthermore, a deep Moho (39.5+/-1.5 km) is proposed underneath the northern tip of theMarlborough sounds. Shallow seismic and gravity investigations of the southeastern corner of the SWB reveal a complex faulting regime with high-angle normal and reverse faults as well as a component of strike slip. The overall style of faulting in the SWB changes from the west to the east. There are the low-angle thrust faults of the Taranaki Fault zone in the west, the high-angle mostly reverse faults in the eastern part of the basin and the strike slip faults, with a component of vertical movement, at the eastern boundary within the Tararua Ranges.</p>
Segmenting Visitors to Battlefield Sites: International Visitors to the Former DMZ in Vietnam
Authors:   , Le Diem Trinh Thi 
Published: November 2021

<p>Vietnam is an emerging tourist destination with rapid development in the tourism industry over the last decade. Well-known for the Vietnam War, it is expected that battlefield sites are among the country's main attractions for international tourists. However, to date, there has been no research examining visitors to battlefield sites in Vietnam. This study aims to contribute to filling this perceived gap by examining the visitors to the former Vietnamese De-militarised Zone (DMZ). Its objectives are: (1) to identify tourist motivations for visiting the DMZ, (2) to segment the DMZ visitors based on motivations, and (3) to determine the importance of battlefield sites in tourists' decision to travel to Vietnam. International visitors to the Vinh Moc Tunnels, a site often included in the DMZ tour, were chosen as a study sample. Data in this study was collected in an intercept self-completed questionnaire survey, which resulted in a sample of 481 respondents. Statistical analysis of the data was supplemented by content analysis of qualitative findings where appropriate. The findings show that respondents visited the DMZ for a variety of motivations. Five motivations were generated from the factor analysis of 22 quantitative motivational items namely: Personal involvement, Interest in war related sites and exhibitions, Education and exploration, Location and convenience, and Novelty seeking. These delineated motivations were supported and extended by respondents' self-expressed motivations. Based on these motivations, three groups of visitors to the DMZ were identified using cluster analysis: the Battlefield Tourism Enthusiast, the Opportunist, and the Passive Tourist. These three visitors segments differed significantly in terms of socio-demographic characteristics, trip related characteristics, and especially travel decision-making. The Enthusiasts had the highest interest in visiting battlefield sites in Vietnam. The Opportunists tended to visit sites based on location and convenience, and the Passive Tourists indicated relatively low rankings for all reasons for visiting battlefield sites. This study also found that battlefield sites only played a small role in tourists' decision to visit Vietnam and that most tourists visited Vietnam for its culture, landscape and history. Several implications and recommendations arise from this study, including the need for continuing research on motivations for battlefield tourism in other countries. In addition, it is suggested that the educative function should be emphasised in developing battlefield sites as tourist attractions.</p>
A Case Study: How Young Children and Teachers Use an Interactive Whiteboard in a New Zealand Kindergarten Setting for Visual Art Learning Experiences
Authors:   , Terreni Lisa 
Published: November 2021

<p>This case study examines how an interactive whiteboard (IWB) was used in a New Zealand kindergarten to support young children's visual art learning experiences. A qualitative approach was used to investigate the use of the IWB. Data were collected through participant observation, analysis of teachers' narrative assessments of children, and focus group interviews with teachers and parents. A socio-cultural perspective on visual art education for young children provided a framework for analysing and interpreting the data. The findings of the research indicated that when an IWB is integrated into a kindergarten visual art programme it can be a useful tool for motivating and assisting children with visual art learning experiences. The affordances of the IWB allow for some new art experiences to occur that are different from that of traditional art mediums. It was observed, however, that creative art ideas developed with an IWB can be translated into traditional art mediums and vice versa. Problems and issues were also identified in the study, in particular the need for appropriate professional development for teachers to help them maximise the potential of the IWB for early childhood teaching. Areas for further research are discussed, and some recommendations are made for best practice with an IWB for supporting children's visual art learning experiences.</p>
The Recent Carbonate Sediments of Palmyra Atoll, Northern Line Islands, Central Pacific Ocean
Authors:   , Clark Oscar 
Published: November 2021

<p>Palmyra Atoll is an isolated carbonate reef system located approximately 1600 km south of Hawaii in the northern Line Islands, central Pacific Ocean. Sediment samples from the lagoons and tidal zones were analyzed for grainsize and composition, and the results used to compile detailed maps and interpret the environments and lithofacies present. A distinct grainsize distribution was observed forming concentric bands ranging from coarse gravel rubble on the outer reef through to finer material in the interior of the atoll in the deep lagoons, where peloidal muds prevail. Five lithologic facies have been identified and typical sediments are poorly sorted and near-symmetrical in their grainsize distribution. On average, sediments are medium sand. A distinct chlorozoan assemblage was observed with coral and calcareous red algal fragments forming half of the sediment, with varying amounts of molluscs, Halimeda and foraminifera being the lesser major constituents. Lagoonal and tidal sediments showed little variation in composition between locations and lacked clear compositional zonation, characteristic of other larger atolls of the Pacific. Palmyra Atoll is unique in that it has had little human intervention for the last sixty years and as a result uninhibited natural processes are occurring. It is also unique in that it displays relatively deep for its size (<55 m), steep-sided compartmentalized lagoons that have abundant fine material (upward of 70% silt or finer), a feature not commonly observed at other Pacific atolls. This fine material has been identified as a peloidal mud and its mode and rate of deposition may be partly controlled by the abundant zooplankton in the lagoons. Recent sediments of Palmyra Atoll are almost entirely carbonate, originating from reef organisms inhabiting the atoll. The only other material is small amounts of siliceous sponge skeletons.</p>