13553 research outputs found
Sort by
Comfortment, Excitement, Envigourment
No full textThis thesis proposes a theoretical framework and system of analysis by which architects can better understand and respond to the desires of their clients. This framework is based on a synthesis of tripartite conceptions of the human psyche from both Greek philosophy and Buddhism.Specifically analysed are each of Aristotle’s three Orexes (Desires), which he derived from Plato’s three aspects of the soul, these are: epithumos (appetitive desire), boulêsis (rational desire), and thumos (spirited desire). These three desires are synthesised with the Buddhist Tilakkhaṇa (Three Universal Truths): dukkha (suffering), annica (impermanence), and anatta (self-renunciation).The outcomes of these syntheses are respectively termed: Comfortment, Excitement, and Envigourment. Each of these three terms are explained, with specific examples given to show how particular applications of architectural features may best respond to the known and unknown desires of clients.This framework is then tested in a speculative context. The site, located in the Old-Town of Hakodate City, Hokkaido, Japan, is analysed from its geographic, historic, and architectural context, with the many notably relevant buildings recorded through the author’s photographs.The hypothetical domestic clients’ characters are analysed. Finally, three thematically distinct client-responsive house designs are presented. So as to more clearly demonstrate how Comfortment, Excitement, and Envigourment operate, one design responds to each of them.</p
Reclaiming Resistance: A Commentary on Student Movements, Counter Accounting, and the Ousting of Sheikh Hasina’s Autocratic Regime in Bangladesh
No full textDrawing on a recent student-led movement in Bangladesh that led to the ousting of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, this commentary illustrates how social movements can empower marginalised communities and challenge powerful institutions. By focusing on the role of social media and the reclamation of symbolic terms, the commentary demonstrates how counter-hegemonic narratives can mobilise public resistance. The Bangladesh case serves as a powerful example of how social and environmental accounting (SEA) can evolve to better reflect the lived realities of oppressed groups and contribute to social justice movements
A New Life in New Zealand: Exploring Adult Migrants’ Social Networks Over the Life Course
No full textMigration can result in a range of experiences, often leading to unequal life outcomes compared to locally born citizens. One challenge that migrants face is the difficulty in establishing fulfilling social networks, which can result in loneliness and isolation. New Zealand has a large population of migrants, yet little is known about how they form connections. A narrative approach, informed by social constructionism, was used to analyse nine life course interviews with later life migrants who moved to New Zealand as adults in the mid-to-late 20th century. The theories of life course principles and the convoy model were employed to investigate how these participants formed convoys over time and what factors influenced this process. Findings suggest that attempting to find initial connections is challenging due to a culture of superficial friendliness. Also, participants who struggled to integrate told stories of othering and racism, in contrast to those with English colonial experience who revealed privilege by often avoiding these experiences. I argue that their collective stories reveal the internalisation of Western cultural norms that are pervasive in a relatively homogeneous New Zealand society. Similarly, individualism and neoliberal meritocracy mask the structural determinants that cause inequality among later life migrants, especially for those who differ from this homogeneity. Overall, this project suggests that New Zealand was a welcoming place for the participants, albeit with limitations. Also, the outer layers of social networks have an important yet not well-understood function that potentially helps mitigate loneliness throughout the life course. Further research and policy should investigate ways to foster inclusion for recent migrants, to prevent later life isolation and reduce structural inequality.</p
Semi-supervised Model-Based Clustering via Finite-Mixtures using Proportional Odds Models for Ordinal Data
No full textThis thesis introduces a semi-supervised learning via the finite-mixture approach for model-based clustering in analyzing ordinal data. Our research focuses on applying this technique to ordered categorical data in a matrix format, such as those obtained from surveys with Likert scale responses. These data matrices have subjects as rows and a set of ordinal variables (e.g., survey questions) as columns. We employ the proportional odds model, a popular and widely used approach for analyzing such data, as our basic model structure. We propose an approach to analyze datasets containing both labeled and unlabeled observations from multiple clusters and the data with unknown cluster memberships come from a finite-mixture component. The model fitting is performed using the expectation–maximization algorithm, incorporating the observations with labeled cluster memberships to find the cluster memberships for unlabeled data.To evaluate the performance of our proposed method, we conducted a simulation study across six different scenarios, each with varying the proportions of known and unknown cluster memberships. The fitted models accurately estimate parameters in most of the designed scenarios, indicating that our technique is effective in clustering partially-labeled data with ordered categorical response variables. Additionally, this simulation study shows that the standard errors of the corresponding model's parameters can be estimated using the asymptotic method.This thesis also presents a simulation study to compare the clustering results with the true ones across six different scenarios using three measurements: Adjusted Rand Index, Normalized Variation of Information, and Normalized Information Distance. The last simulation study of this thesis evaluates the performance of eight common information criteria used for model selection.Finally, this thesis illustrates our approach with real-world Chinook salmon trial data collected by the Cawthron Institute, which is one of New Zealand's largest independent science organizations in aquaculture sector. The clustering analysis provide a possible way of using cheaper or non-destructive biomarkers in distinguishing the fish health by incorporating the known health labels created from fish data with more expensive or destructive biomarkers.</p
Enhancing oralities methodology: ontological framing and cultural principles in research
No full textResearch interest in oralities, traditional Indigenous dialogic forms of communication, is growing. Various oralities have been valuable in Oceania social research in fields such as leadership development and climate change. However, in the transition of traditional forms to formal research, attention can be paid to on-the-ground details and matters of culture rather than to ontological framings. This article provides two ways to attend to this issue. The first refers to the Oceania Oralities Framework, a representation of ontological elements that inform the performance of oralities in the region. The second is an exploration of the way cultural groups’ prioritised principles are useful for conducting research through an Oceania orality and which map onto the framework. The framework and principles are demonstrated through the example of tok stori, a Melanesian orality and an account of education research in the institutional domain. However, these ideas have potential in any social domain or field of social research, and in contexts that invite research through traditional oralities beyond Melanesia
Does the ENSO Cycle Impact the Grass Pollen Season in Auckland New Zealand, with Implications for Allergy Management?
No full textIn many regions, the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) cycle is a key factor in modulating climate processes that can influence seasonal variability in the production and dispersal of allergy-triggering pollen. However, the impacts on allergy health are not well known. We compare grass pollen seasons between the major modes of the ENSO cycle in Auckland, New Zealand’s largest city, within a region that is highly sensitive to quasi-predictable meteorological oscillations of the ENSO cycle. We find no clear difference in the timing of onset of the pollen seasons, but season length was shorter, by >30 days, and less severe during the La Niña phase than for the other phases. The difference in pollen season length may be explained by the greater summer rainfall typically experienced in Auckland and elsewhere in northern New Zealand during La Niña phases, which tend to suppress grass pollen abundance when excessive. As grass pollen is the principal source of allergenic pollen in New Zealand and in many other countries, these results have wider implications for allergy management. With ENSO forecasting offering the prospect of several month’s lead time, there is potential for improving community preparedness and resilience to inter-annual dynamics of the grass pollen season. This work points to the need to better understand the influence of short-term climate cycles on seasonal variability in pollen allergy, while we also emphasise that the strong geographical heterogeneity in ENSO cycle climate impacts necessitates a region-specific approach. This work also further underscores the need for standardised, local–regional pollen monitoring in NZ and the risk of relying upon static, nationwide pollen calendars for informing allergy treatment
Pilcrow: Strategies for Integrating Embodied Carbon into Architectural Practice
No full text“What we do in the next few years, will determine the next few thousand years” . Words such as this from Sir David Attenborough, among many others, have directly inspired people all over the world to take note of the seriousness of climate change. In response, industries and governments alike have established targets to be carbon neutral by 2050, to trigger efforts towards reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The construction industry is no different. Being responsible for 20% of the emissions in New Zealand , and 39% of those worldwide , construction offers a significant opportunity to positively contribute to these carbon neutral targets. For decades, sustainability has been heavily associated with operational carbon, i.e., the reduction of building energy use. Only in recent years have the emissions associated with the material extraction, manufacturing, and transportation of materials, known as embodied carbon, been acknowledged. The field is becoming increasingly popular, both in scholarly and practical circles. Governments, certification standards, and financing requirements incentivise recording embodied carbon emissions reductions and their public disclosure. This acceleration puts pressure on architects and designers to reduce the embodied carbon impact of their work. However, there is a significant knowledge and skill gap in the industry to meet the demand for disclosure of embodied carbon. Many established professionals face an urgent need to understand and extract actionable insights from a new field of knowledge to achieve reductions in practice. This research responds to the pressing need for new knowledge related to embodied carbon and its application in the real world and asks the question Can embodied carbon be integrated into the architectural design process to support low-carbon decision-making? A collaborative action research framework was adopted to develop contributions to both industry and the wider academic literature. Measure, design, and value were established as key research objectives at the beginning of the study, with the aim of collecting data through a range of different scientific, creative, and ethnographic methods while being embedded within New Zealand’s largest architectural practice, Warren and Mahoney. The goal was to understand how to successfully implement data-informed decision-making into design practice, enabling industry professionals to turn climate commitments into actionable outcomes on real-world projects. The embedded approach enabled intervention in, observation of, and reflection on the opportunities and barriers that affect design teams in practice.Several research cycles were undertaken on both completed and active projects at different design stages. Each cycle investigated measurement workflows, design stages, and factors that influenced decision-making. Observations of the practice were made through focused workshops on embodied carbon and participation in design team meetings. The results of this research demonstrate how the concept of embodied carbon can unlock design opportunities by bringing attention to the time and physical scales of design. The primary contribution of this research is a detailed analysis of and reflection on a subset of the 50+ projects the researcher was exposed to while embedded in Warren and Mahoney. Specifically, how embodied carbon research influences design thinking, and how carbon evaluation in a New Zealand context can lead the wider industry towards a shared zero carbon objective. This thesis aims to provide tangible steps the construction industry can, and must, take to contribute to a low carbon future.</p
Latent Profiles of Youth Engaging in Repeat Offending
No full textYouth reoffending has been a persistent issue for decades, particularly during adolescence, where offending is often considered ‘near normative’ (Moffitt, 1993, 2018). While extensive research has been conducted, the problem still persists, with recent increases in youth reoffending noted in some countries (Cheng, 2024; MST Institute, 2018). Most studies in this area have focused on variable-centred approaches, examining relationships between different risk factors, while fewer have adopted a person-centred approach, often limited by focusing on single factors or broad factor domains. This thesis addresses this gap by combining person- and variable-centred approaches to explore individual differences in youth characteristics, focusing specifically on the ‘individual’ risk factor domain. Using data from 1,009 boys in the Pittsburgh Youth Study (PYS), a Latent Profile Analysis identified five distinct risk profiles (Normative, Slight-Risk, Anxious-Impulsive, Callous-Impulsive, and High-Risk) based on four constructs Interpersonal Callousness (IC), Hyperactivity, Impulsivity, and Inattention (HIA), Conduct Problems (CP) and Anxiety (ANX). These profiles were examined for their predictive value in youth reoffending and other dimensions of offending like participation, severity of offending and escalation over a seven-year period. In addition, the study explored within-individual differences by examining whether profile members transitioned between profiles across time. Findings indicate that the five latent profiles significantly predicted reoffending, and around 50% of the sample transitioned across profiles highlighting the importance of tailored interventions. This research contributes to the field by advocating for a more personalized approach to rehabilitation within juvenile justice systems.</p
Exploring a school’s context and its influence on goal processes: A music therapy student’s perspective
No full textThis qualitative research project explored how the context of a school influenced a music therapy student’s approach to goal-setting. While there is extensive literature on goal processes, few studies examine the relationship between these processes and the practice context, particularly within Aotearoa. Thus, a case study of a specialist school is utilised to explore this in greater detail. This interpretivist case study is viewed through a social constructivist lens. The research drew on multiple data sources, including reflective journal entries, personal meeting notes, session notes, Individual Learning Plans, educational documents, information from the school’s webpage, and clinical notes from four individuals and one group (comprising seven students). Data were analysed through reflexive thematic analysis, employing both inductive and deductive approaches. Findings suggest that the school’s values and beliefs shaped its approach to student learning and development, which in turn influenced working processes within the school, ultimately impacting the identification of a therapeutic focus. The understanding and support for music therapy within the school also influenced goal-setting. Finally, time emerged as an overarching factor that influenced all areas of the goal-setting process. Although the scope of data and scale of the study were identified as limitations, the research aligns within the ethics approval granted for this type of student research. This research contributes to the literature on identifying a therapeutic focus in music therapy, particularly for students and new professionals. It is hoped that this study will offer insights for future music therapy students, and new music therapy professionals as they embark on their journeys.</p
Access Repository Dashboard
Do you manage Victoria University of Wellington? Access insider analytics, issue reports and manage access to outputs from your repository in the CORE Repository Dashboard!