title: Improving mental wellbeing among university students via a smartphone application based on Acceptance and Commitment Therapy

authors: Li, Fengshan

abstract: The number of university students experiencing mental disturbances is increasing. Due to the impact it has on students’ academic life, there is a need for an efficient, convenient, and cost- effective intervention which can be widely applied to university populations. Acceptance and
Commitment Therapy (ACT) is an effective behavioural treatment for a range of psychological disorders. ACT has a transdiagnostic feature, as it focus on educating individuals to be aware of their internal experiences, such as thoughts and feelings and to accept them, instead of suppressing or avoiding them. The fundamental goal of ACT is to promote individuals’ psychological flexibility when faced with challenging events by addressing their valued life goals. ACT CompanionTM app is an ACT-based smartphone app which incorporates exercises to assist users achieve their treatment goals. I used a single- subject design to examine the efficacy of the ACT CompanionTM app in reducing measures of stress, anxiety, depression, and psychological flexibility for 9 university participants. Graphs showed that app use lowered daily stress levels for all participants. At a group level, there was a significant decrease in anxiety, stress, depressive symptoms, and negative emotions. However, no significant effect of app use on mindfulness and psychological flexibility. Overall, the results suggest that the ACT CompanionTM app is a promising approach for improving mental wellbeing among university students.

text: Improving mental wellbeing among university students via a smartphone application based on Acceptance and Commitment Therapy The number of university students experiencing mental disturbances is increasing. Due to the impact it has on students’ academic life, there is a need for an efficient, convenient, and cost- effective intervention which can be widely applied to university populations. Acceptance and
Commitment Therapy (ACT) is an effective behavioural treatment for a range of psychological disorders. ACT has a transdiagnostic feature, as it focus on educating individuals to be aware of their internal experiences, such as thoughts and feelings and to accept them, instead of suppressing or avoiding them. The fundamental goal of ACT is to promote individuals’ psychological flexibility when faced with challenging events by addressing their valued life goals. ACT CompanionTM app is an ACT-based smartphone app which incorporates exercises to assist users achieve their treatment goals. I used a single- subject design to examine the efficacy of the ACT CompanionTM app in reducing measures of stress, anxiety, depression, and psychological flexibility for 9 university participants. Graphs showed that app use lowered daily stress levels for all participants. At a group level, there was a significant decrease in anxiety, stress, depressive symptoms, and negative emotions. However, no significant effect of app use on mindfulness and psychological flexibility. Overall, the results suggest that the ACT CompanionTM app is a promising approach for improving mental wellbeing among university students.

year: 2018

title: Reinforcement learning for optimisation of a cascade river system

authors: Waddington, Nicolaas

subjects: hydropower

abstract: Getting the most out of renewable power stations has financial benefits and the environmental benefits of displacing electricity generation from fossil fuels. This thesis considers how to reduce losses in the Waikato Hydro Scheme that are due to inefficient operation while ensuring no operating constraints are breached. The hydroelectric dams are currently centrally run by a human "hydro controller" who makes decisions on how much generation to assign to each station at any given time. The hydro controller ensures no operating constraints are breached, but it may be possible to improve the running efficiency of the hydro stations. Currently, hydro controllers only have basic tools to assist them when deciding which action to take. The aim of this thesis is to create live recommendations to help them make decisions. To this end, historical data is used to train a model using reinforcement learning that can be used to provide such live recommendations on how much generation to assign to each station. The Waikato River hydro control problem is formulated as a Markov decision process and several variations on the Monte Carlo control algorithm for reinforcement learning are proposed and compared empirically. The Waikato River hydro control problem has a large action space with billions of distinct ways to assign generation to stations. The K-medoids algorithm is used to cluster actions so that 
 learning becomes practical. Furthermore, once a model has been learned, a hill-climbing approach is used to improve the quality of the selected actions. Combining these techniques gave better running efficiency than historical human performance in 18% of scenarios without breaching any operating constraints. 34% of scenarios did breach constraints so possible improvements to address this are also discussed.

text: Reinforcement learning for optimisation of a cascade river system Getting the most out of renewable power stations has financial benefits and the environmental benefits of displacing electricity generation from fossil fuels. This thesis considers how to reduce losses in the Waikato Hydro Scheme that are due to inefficient operation while ensuring no operating constraints are breached. The hydroelectric dams are currently centrally run by a human "hydro controller" who makes decisions on how much generation to assign to each station at any given time. The hydro controller ensures no operating constraints are breached, but it may be possible to improve the running efficiency of the hydro stations. Currently, hydro controllers only have basic tools to assist them when deciding which action to take. The aim of this thesis is to create live recommendations to help them make decisions. To this end, historical data is used to train a model using reinforcement learning that can be used to provide such live recommendations on how much generation to assign to each station. The Waikato River hydro control problem is formulated as a Markov decision process and several variations on the Monte Carlo control algorithm for reinforcement learning are proposed and compared empirically. The Waikato River hydro control problem has a large action space with billions of distinct ways to assign generation to stations. The K-medoids algorithm is used to cluster actions so that 
 learning becomes practical. Furthermore, once a model has been learned, a hill-climbing approach is used to improve the quality of the selected actions. Combining these techniques gave better running efficiency than historical human performance in 18% of scenarios without breaching any operating constraints. 34% of scenarios did breach constraints so possible improvements to address this are also discussed.

year: 2025

title: Challenges Faced – Implications for Policy: The Everyday Lives of Eastern European Women in New Zealand

authors: Ember, Adrienna

subjects: everyday life

abstract: This study explored the everyday lives, aspirations, and coping strategies of seven Eastern European immigrant women in New Zealand who came from Bulgaria, the former Eastern Germany, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Serbia, and Slovakia. The answers to the research questions aimed to contribute to the deconstruction of the invisibility and marginalisation of these women in New Zealand.
Guided by the philosophies of Kaupapa Māori Research; the theory of Human Wellbeing; and the theory of Positive Psychology, and using the methods of narrative inquiry, three interviews were conducted with each participant. The focus of the first interviews was to learn about the everyday lives of research participants in their countries of origin. The second interview explored the reasons of relocation to New Zealand, the settlement process, and how women re-established their lives in their new locations. In the final interviews women talked about their current everyday lives and their plans for the future.
Interviews were recorded and summarised in interview summary reports which research participants modified in collaboration with the researcher until a final version was achieved. In addition, women participated in two focus group sessions. The first session was devoted to establish connections among the participants and allow themes to emerge from their conversations. The second group session aimed to explore areas women struggled with in their lives the most: relationships and employment opportunities.
The study yielded contributions to the research topic, to the acculturation literature, and to the design of research with migrants. Firstly, it revealed both negative and positive aspects of the participants’ everyday lives and highlighted some under-researched cultural differences from the mainstream population.
Women highlighted as an important cultural difference their strong preference for straightforward communication which was often experienced as offensive and blatant by local New Zealanders. Research participants critiqued the necessity of networking to obtain jobs in New Zealand which is a clear obstacle for a newly arrived migrant.
This study also highlighted how the acculturation process is more individual and complex than conventional models have sought to explain. While traditional acculturation literature suggests that migrants go through some common patterns during their settlement that ideally leads to their assimilation to the host culture, in this research not all migrant women intended to assimilate. Indeed, those with a stronger wish to become part of the host culture reported more disappointments than those who embraced their cultural otherness as a positive aspect and did not mind reminding different from the dominant Pakeha culture.
Finally, for migrant studies a less common research design was applied by using the Kaupapa Māori framework. This philosophy proposes a research process that empowers immigrants to voice their needs and strengthen them as agents of their lives beyond the research process. While two strength based theories were used for data interpretation (the 3-D model of the Human Wellbeing Theory and the PERMA model of Positive Psychology), the data analysis revealed that both models showed some limitations by failing to incorporate the dimension of spiritual and physical wellbeing within their domains.

text: Challenges Faced – Implications for Policy: The Everyday Lives of Eastern European Women in New Zealand This study explored the everyday lives, aspirations, and coping strategies of seven Eastern European immigrant women in New Zealand who came from Bulgaria, the former Eastern Germany, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Serbia, and Slovakia. The answers to the research questions aimed to contribute to the deconstruction of the invisibility and marginalisation of these women in New Zealand.
Guided by the philosophies of Kaupapa Māori Research; the theory of Human Wellbeing; and the theory of Positive Psychology, and using the methods of narrative inquiry, three interviews were conducted with each participant. The focus of the first interviews was to learn about the everyday lives of research participants in their countries of origin. The second interview explored the reasons of relocation to New Zealand, the settlement process, and how women re-established their lives in their new locations. In the final interviews women talked about their current everyday lives and their plans for the future.
Interviews were recorded and summarised in interview summary reports which research participants modified in collaboration with the researcher until a final version was achieved. In addition, women participated in two focus group sessions. The first session was devoted to establish connections among the participants and allow themes to emerge from their conversations. The second group session aimed to explore areas women struggled with in their lives the most: relationships and employment opportunities.
The study yielded contributions to the research topic, to the acculturation literature, and to the design of research with migrants. Firstly, it revealed both negative and positive aspects of the participants’ everyday lives and highlighted some under-researched cultural differences from the mainstream population.
Women highlighted as an important cultural difference their strong preference for straightforward communication which was often experienced as offensive and blatant by local New Zealanders. Research participants critiqued the necessity of networking to obtain jobs in New Zealand which is a clear obstacle for a newly arrived migrant.
This study also highlighted how the acculturation process is more individual and complex than conventional models have sought to explain. While traditional acculturation literature suggests that migrants go through some common patterns during their settlement that ideally leads to their assimilation to the host culture, in this research not all migrant women intended to assimilate. Indeed, those with a stronger wish to become part of the host culture reported more disappointments than those who embraced their cultural otherness as a positive aspect and did not mind reminding different from the dominant Pakeha culture.
Finally, for migrant studies a less common research design was applied by using the Kaupapa Māori framework. This philosophy proposes a research process that empowers immigrants to voice their needs and strengthen them as agents of their lives beyond the research process. While two strength based theories were used for data interpretation (the 3-D model of the Human Wellbeing Theory and the PERMA model of Positive Psychology), the data analysis revealed that both models showed some limitations by failing to incorporate the dimension of spiritual and physical wellbeing within their domains.

year: 2016