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Democratising Design - Exploring Artificial Intelligence and Procedural Modelling in Multi-material 3D Printing
No full textArtificial intelligence (AI) continues to grow rapidly across design disciplines, offering unprecedented advantages in simplifying complex workflows in additive manufacturing (AM), particularly in multi-material 3D printing (MMP). While MMP enables the creation of materially heterogeneous objects within a single print, it remains largely inaccessible to many due to the technical experience required for traditional computer-aided design (CAD) systems.As MMP continue to advance, the lack of intuitive and inclusive design tools limits broader engagement with these technologies. In response, ‘Democratising Design’ explores the potential of AI and procedural modelling tools in supporting a more diverse range of users in MMP. A Research for Design approach is used to identify key barriers in MMP and to evaluate the capabilities and limitations of AI and procedural modelling tools. Design precedents are also analysed to understand how similar tools have been applied in digital fabrication. Research Through Design is employed as the primary approach for this research, using an iterative design process and prototyping to develop a proof of concept.This research presents a conceptual workflow that combines AI-generated geometry with procedural modelling, demonstrated through designed 3D printed objects. It highlights the value of hybrid workflows in automating and simplifying complex digital fabrication while maintaining user authorship and creative control. The work reveals the potential of these systems to support adaptable solutions that respond to the evolving needs of AM and contributes to the uptake of MMP by proposing more intuitive and efficient design workflows.</p
Geology of the Tāheke Geothermal Field: insights from U-Pb dating
No full textSituated northwest of Lake Rotoiti in the Rotorua Lakes District, the Tāheke Geothermal Field offers insights into the evolution of volcanism in the northwest Taupō Volcanic Zone (TVZ) and thereby the transition of the volcanic arc into the current configuration. Over 2800 m of drillhole cuttings and ~2000 m of drill cores were sampled in 32 places for lithological analysis, aided by petrographic slides and images from the exploration drilling. From these materials, zircons from 15 samples (14 core, 1 cuttings) were dated by Secondary Ion Mass Spectrometry (SHRIMP) to yield crystallisation age estimates, close to (</p
Constructivist Playfulness: A Multiple Case Study of Science Teachers’ Beliefs and Practices in Using Digital Games
No full textAlthough digital game-based learning (DGBL) offers numerous benefits for science education, teachers can remain hesitant to implement it in their classrooms. Their beliefs about DGBL may act as a barrier to its integration. The literature widely suggests that teachers who hold constructivist beliefs are more likely to adopt technology in more sophisticated ways. Therefore, the present study aims to explore science teachers’ constructivist beliefs and practices in implementing DGBL. A qualitative research approach was employed, specifically a multiple case study design, involving five high school science teachers across various school types in Indonesia. Participants were purposefully selected based on rigorous criteria, including completion of teaching certification, demonstrated proficiency in using digital games, strong constructivist beliefs, and a minimum of five years’ teaching experience. Data were collected through a combination of pre- and post-lesson interviews with teachers, classroom observations, student focus group discussions, and document analysis. Thematic analysis was conducted using both abductive and inductive coding strategies, along with cross-case synthesis.Findings suggest that teachers’ beliefs regarding the use of DGBL in science education are shaped by perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, contextual influences, and self-efficacy. Observations revealed two distinct DGBL implementation patterns: parallel (where digital games are used mainly for assessment purposes) and integrated (where games are embedded within student-centred learning activities). Teachers who implement parallel DGBL practices tended to align with the supplementary category, whereas integrated practices showed alignment with enhancement or transformative uses of digital games. While some teachers demonstrated strong consistency between their beliefs and practices, others showed partial or inconsistent implementation, due primarily to curriculum constraints, pedagogical adjustments, limited resources, or technical challenges.This study provides important implications for both in-service teacher professional development and pre-service teacher education, particularly in enhancing educators’ understanding of the affordances of constructivist DGBL approaches, thereby supporting the effective and meaningful integration of digital games in science classrooms.</p
Kombucha Materiality: Cultivating Sustainable Mindsets and Natural Entanglement through Alternative Design Practices and Materials.
No full textHumans and Nature are no longer unified by the bonds they used to share. Once, we depended on one another in order to survive. Now one exploits the other – labeling it a ‘resource’. This has resulted in a divide, leading to the creation of major WICKED PROBLEMS, one of which is more commonly known as climate change, affecting life globally. This thesis aims to recover the connection humans have to nature through design, by inviting reflection on how to re-shape design practices to be inclusive of this connection and natural processes. It does so by answering the question: “In what ways can the application of alternative design practices cultivate sustainable mindsets that recognise our deep interconnection with the natural environment?”. This thesis explores food’s role within the interconnection of humans, how food plays an important role connecting humans with nature – and how food, food fermentation, and food production waste can be used as tools to create alternative design practices that support the reflection and cultivation of sustainable mindsets. This research explores ‘kombucha’ and its waste material, ‘SCOBY’, as a regenerative alternative to materials such as paper, fabric, and leather showcasing its ability to affect different design disciplines. Through ‘Creative Practice’ and ‘Research Through Design’, this thesis aims to illustrate mindsets of entanglement and sustainability in action through practice. It aims to provide tools which will aid future designers, creatives, and consumers to engage in reflective experiences, outlining mindsets of entanglement. This thesis acts as a knowledge base of experimentation and reflection in which the reader can be educated on ‘sustainability’, ‘critical thinking’, and ‘reflective entanglement’. The exegesis is ‘augmented’ with a number of creative writing outputs called ‘Creative Insertions’. The ‘Creative Insertions’ represent critical reflections developed through the design process. These insertions embody the principles of a research through design methodology, offering experiential insights and moments of innovation. Additionally, this thesis includes a body of design outputs that will be presented in an exhibition format. These works document the material development underpinning the project, the categorisation of materials into a colour chart, preliminary design investigations, and a collaborative social engagement that emerged through the design process. Together, these outputs contribute to a cohesive research enquiry that integrates critical academic reflection with speculative, practice-based experimentation.</p
New Zealand Aotearoa: Tobacco Industry Interference Report 2023
No full textThis report highlights the many tactics tobacco companies and their affiliates employ to kill, weaken, or delay essential policies to reduce tobacco use in NZ.</p
New (and old) aspects of the island syndrome in plants on New Zealand’s outlying islands
No full textFor reasons not fully understood, plant communities on islands differ predictably from mainland ones. For example, plants with herbaceous relatives on the mainland are often woody on islands (Zizka et al., 2022). Island flowers are often white and inconspicuous (Whittaker et al., 2023). This suite of consistent differences between island and mainland species has been termed the island syndrome. The island syndrome can arise from processes of biased colonization (i.e. differences in dispersal and/or establishment) and/or in situ evolution (i.e. evolution on the island, after colonization) (Carlquist, 1974; Barrett, 1996; Ottaviani et al., 2020). The island syndrome is also shaped by abiotic (i.e. climatic and geographic variables) and biotic (i.e. co-occurring island organisms) factors (Burns, 2019). This thesis investigates insular changes in a range of plant functional traits and tries to disentangle the relative roles of biased colonization and in situ evolution, as well as abiotic and biotic factors, in shaping the island syndrome in plants.First (Chapter 2), I explored flower size changes in plants that colonized islands from the New Zealand and Australian mainland. I asked whether pollination mode causes flower size to evolve differently after island colonization, leading animal-pollinated species to follow the island rule (an evolutionary trend wherein small organisms become large and large organisms become small after island colonization). Animal-pollinated flowers followed the island rule, but wind-pollinated flowers did not, instead increasing consistently after colonization.Next (Chapter 3), I explored the relative roles of biotic and abiotic factors in influencing island colonization and establishment. I asked whether Baker’s rule, predicting that the incidence of dioecy among early island colonizers be lower than that of the mainland source pool, can result from trait correlation rather than insularity. The incidence of dioecy was found unrelated to insularity but regulated by dioecy-related traits and climate.Third (Chapter 4), I explored the relative roles of colonization biases and in situ evolution in shaping the island syndrome in plants. I asked whether trait convergence among island Coprosma can result from a combination of in situ evolution and colonization biases. Leaf size was found to be favoured during island establishment, while both leaf size and stature consistently increased on islands as a result of in situ evolution Finally (Chapter 5), I shed some light on the long-standing loss of divarication hypothesis. I asked whether the divaricate habit was actually lost on islands, or whether the trait evolved in the mainland sister taxon after island colonization, thus never appearing on islands. In most cases, island endemics had never been divaricate. Still, when present on islands, divarication was consistently lost. These findings challenge the pairwise comparison method, a long-standing analytical method of island biogeography.Overall, this thesis reveals novel patterns in plant biology and helps disentangle the distinct roles of evolution and colonization biases, as well as biotic and abiotic factors, in shaping plant traits and communities on islands. It also illustrates how investigating changes in plant traits can help identify the evolutionary mechanisms driving island life, and plant life in general.</p
Exploring Digital Social Spaces as Third Places for Young People in Aotearoa New Zealand
No full textThe internet has fundamentally changed where social interactions occur, partially moving social places from material social spaces (MSSs) to digital social spaces (DSSs). Young people are among the most frequent users of DSSs, yet their use is frequently problematised from academic and public perspectives. These top-down critiques of young people’s behaviour have led to tensions between young users and legitimate criticisms of DSSs’ costs for wellbeing. Despite these critiques, literature on DSS use often does not consider how DSSs may act as the social places for young people today. In this thesis, I use Oldenburg’s (1989) third place theory to contextualise young people’s DSS use within frameworks of material sociality, addressing my core research question “to what extent may digital social spaces act as third places for young people?”. Using a mixed-methods social constructivist approach, including a survey and focus groups, this thesis examines how young people navigate DSSs, manage identity and relationships, and perceive the costs of DSS use. My analysis unpacks their experiences in the context of social development, addiction, and embodied experiences in DSSs. The results of this analysis demonstrate that young people’s digital third places are used to compliment, not compete with material third places. This thesis contributes to academic discourses surrounding young people’s use of DSSs and highlights the need for more nuanced approaches in policy and research. In particular, I encourage care when legislating restrictions on DSS use, and prioritising youth perspectives in future research.</p
Investigating and Circumventing Mechanisms of Resistance to the Antibacterial Candidate, Niclosamide
No full textThe need for novel antibiotics is urgent, as mobilised resistance elements have emerged against even antibiotics of last resort and the productivity of the traditional drug development pipeline has severely waned. Repurposing existing approved pharmaceuticals with cryptic antibacterial properties offers a faster, cheaper route to novel antibacterials. Niclosamide, an anthelmintic developed in the 1950s, has been demonstrated to be a potent inhibitor of gram-positive bacteria, and no spontaneous resistance to it has been observed. However, the impact of mobilised resistance elements highlights the need for techniques that assess potential mechanisms of resistance more broadly. Functional screening of metagenomic libraries can reveal a diversity of potential resistance elements. However, libraries made using traditional methods are biased towards recovering mature resistance elements and will not identify genes that may only be one or two point mutations away from providing high-level resistance. The discovery of such genes can inform possible stewardship measures and provide fundamental insights to inform the synthesis of improved analogues. This thesis presents work aimed at identifying and characterising novel mechanisms of niclosamide resistance from a small insert, high-expression metagenomic library. To extend the utility of niclosamide, we also sought to generate niclosamide analogues with broad-spectrum activity. Functional screening employed a bespoke high-expression metagenomic library, created using the restriction enzyme FatI (cuts CATG) to enrich for ATG start codons that could be precision-cloned downstream of a strong plasmid-borne promoter and ribosome binding sequence. Niclosamide selection recovered 88 unique resistance elements that varied in the strength of niclosamide resistance conferred. Three enzyme-mediated methods of detoxification were validated using mass spectrometry. Forty-four resistance elements were annotated as flavoenzymes and were found to detoxify niclosamide by nitroreduction. A further ten resistance genes were annotated as methyltransferases, and a final resistance element, recovered from a pilot library, was found to hydrolyse niclosamide. To further assess the evolutionary potential of these resistance elements, directed evolution campaigns using error-prone PCR were conducted for representatives of these three mechanisms. Selected flavoenzymes were demonstrated to be easily evolvable, requiring one to two mutations to develop a mature resistance phenotype. The single hydrolysing resistance element was shown to be evolvable, albeit via the accrual of up to eight amino acid substitutions. In contrast, no improved methyltransferases or putative drug-sequestering proteins were recovered, suggesting that while other mechanisms might confer low levels of resistance, their evolutionary potential to become mature resistance elements is low. The collateral resistance and sensitivity profiles of improved enzymes were shown to be altered, suggesting potential strategies for combating the emergence of niclosamide resistance, including rational analogue design. While effective against gram-positive bacteria, gram-negative bacteria are intrinsically resistant to niclosamide due to TolC-mediated efflux. A parallel avenue of investigation sought to generate and evaluate niclosamide analogues effective against E. coli. A structure-activity relationship study revealed several positions on niclosamide that lead to increased antibacterial activity in TolC-intact E. coli and a panel of ESKAPE pathogens. Work is ongoing to determine if these analogues are effective in a murine abscess model.</p
An Exploration of the Breastfeeding Policy and Practices in Achieving Baby Friendly Hospital Initiative in Samoa
No full textThis research explores the barriers and facilitators of exclusive breastfeeding and the effectiveness of Baby Friendly Hospital Initiative (BFHI) in improving breastfeeding practices for mothers in Samoa. Exclusive breastfeeding has a significant role in maternal and infant health and is essential for infant development and survival. In Samoa, exclusive breastfeeding rates at 6 months were at around 100% in the 1960’s. However, the rates continue to decline over the past decades, currently at 51.4 % in 2019. The decline in exclusive breastfeeding rates, especially for Samoan infants aged 3-6 months, is not well explained by the available data. A qualitative study design incorporating a modified Socio-Ecological Model framework, and Pacific research methods were employed to conduct this research. Breastfeeding mothers were recruited from immunisation clinics, and with their consent, each mother selected a family member to be included in focus group discussions. Key informants were recruited from government and private organisations. Semi-structured interviews and focus group discussions were utilised for data collection, and data was analysed thematically to draw out the key themes. The results show that the majority of the participants were aware of the benefits of breastfeeding and were willing to continue breastfeeding their babies until they were two years old or more. However, the working mothers experienced some challenges in continuing breastfeeding on returning to work after maternity leave due to lack of workplace support and policies. Other factors including socioeconomic status, traditional practices and beliefs, family support, inadequate postpartum assistance from health professionals and not promoting breastfeeding policies also influence Samoan women breastfeeding practices. The findings suggest increased breastfeeding awareness through improved mother friendly care, monitoring breastfeeding policies, proper guidance and support in hospitals including use of breastfeeding counsellors, workplace support and policies across all government and private sectors to promote exclusive breastfeeding in Samoa.</p
From outsider to insider? Moving towards epistemic justice for peer supporters within Aotearoa New Zealand’s mental health system
No full textBackgroundMental health peer support has grown significantly worldwide within the last three decades. As with other nations, Aotearoa New Zealand is currently in the process of expanding the peer support workforce within its mental health system. This is a promising development because peer supporters have the ability to make unique epistemic contributions to service delivery due to their distinct lived experience epistemologies and practices. Indeed, policy documents tend to charactertise the potential of peer support as transformative. However, literature has indicated that peer supporters face challenges when working within traditional mental health spaces. These include distrust from other mental health professionals, struggling against a dominant biomedical framing of mental distress, feeling relegated to an assistant clinician role, and ambiguities concerning role definition and scope. In this thesis I explore whether and how these challenges may contribute to peer supporters experiencing epistemic injustice. AimI sought to explore how peer supporters experience and understand the epistemic conditions within the mental health system and what causal mechanisms may contribute to epistemic injustice in this context. As part of this investigation, I aimed to identify key factors that can aid in protecting peer support’s epistemic qualities when situated within mainstream mental health services. MethodsI took a critical realist informed, contextual epistemic injustice approach to this research. The main phase of the study comprised 28 interviews, with 14 peer supporters and 14 clinicians. Following this, I drafted themes and a preliminary framework for peer support epistemic justice and consulted with six peer supporters to review the framework and develop it further. I analysed data using a critical realist adaptation of thematic analysis that considered epistemic injustice within each domain of critical realism’s stratified conception of reality. These findings were synthesised following consultation in order to create a framework that may facilitate peer support epistemic justice within Aotearoa New Zealand’s mental health system. FindingsPeer supporters are well positioned to aid in system and service transformation. Their knowledge is derived from lived experience of mental distress and mental health services, resulting in a unique standpoint to provide compelling and actionable insights. Peer support’s lineage is partly within activist grassroots movements which held mainstream mental health systems to account. Elements of this adversarial relationship continue, with peer supporters frequently perceived as a counterbalancing force to clinical orientated services. The transformative discourse associated with peer supporters in policy suggests that peer supporters possess knowledge that is compelling, distinctive and disruptive to existing systems.Peer supporters operate within an epistemically precarious position in Aotearoa New Zealand. They are expected to transform the mental health system and challenge clinical culture within mental health services – while being paid less than other professions and lacking the usual markers of legitimacy that denote epistemic authority. Peer supporters are near the bottom of a systemic knowledge hierarchy which enshrines a medical episteme as the highest form of mental health knowledge. As a practice and knowledge system, peer support is at risk of losing its distinctive features and falling into a ‘mini clinician’ role. Being explicitly ‘out’ as having had mental health challenges can lead to stigmatising responses from mental health providers and further devalue how peer support knowledge is received. The epistemic agency of peer supporters can be protected by developing robust peer support leadership positions, orientating clinicians to the peer support’s role and historical context and building up national-scale advocacy and representation. The move to integrate peer supporters into mental health services must be paired with a sustained effort to ensure their knowledge system and epistemic agency are protected. ConclusionsPeer support knowledge systems can positively impact Aotearoa New Zealand’s mental health system and mental health systems around the globe. As a workforce that straddles the line between experiential knowledge and professional training, peer supporters are particularly equipped to strengthen the voice of tāngata whaiora (service users) who themselves are at a marked risk of facing epistemic injustice. However, actualising their potential will require attending to the structural and relational conditions within the system which inhibit flourishing of peer supporter knowledge. This research is among the first to investigate epistemic injustice within a peer support context. Peer support is positioned by policy as a force for transformation but this transformative capability rests upon a move towards epistemic justice.</p
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