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Hidden in Hides: The World of Calcutta Tannery Workers, 1905-1996
No full textThis thesis explores the multi-layered world of Calcutta tannery workers from 1905 to 1996. Historically, leather works in India were practised by two occupational and untouchable castes—the Chamars and the Muchis. Their untouchability stemmed from their handling of certain substances considered unclean and pollution-transmitting in a ritualistic sense. Before 1905, the leather industry in Bengal mostly existed as a small-scale home-based industry and tanning depended on the traditional knowledge and skill of the Chamar tanners. The arrival of the Chinese tanners in the late eighteenth century however complicated this story. From its revival and modernisation in 1905 under the banners of the Swadeshi and Boycott Movement, to its relocation to Bantala in Calcutta in 1996, the fate of this industry and its workforce has been deeply entwined with the socio-political and economic realities of the time. Amidst the turbulent political climate of Bengal in 1905, as Bengali middle-class educated gentlemen found themselves out of employment options, Bengali national capitalists and scientific intelligentsia came together under the aegis of Swadeshi industrial endeavours to revive the leather industry and modernise it to provide employment opportunities for the educated bhadralok. The First World War and the military demand for leather goods helped these modernisation efforts. The modernisation of leather production in Calcutta therefore occurred in tandem with efforts to destigmatise the industry and make it more attractive to the Bengali bhadralok. In the end, it deepened the hierarchy of the workforce.From 1905 onwards notions of ‘modernity’ had infiltrated the language of leather production in Calcutta, and this thesis examines the conundrums of this modernity. It argues that the project of modernisation of the Calcutta leather industry and the concomitant efforts to introduce technical education in leather production created three very distinct social groups associated with this industry—the outcaste Chamar tanners, the migrant Chinese tannery owners and the educated Bengali gentlemen. Chapter 1 spans from 1905 to 1911. It traces the story of modernisation of the leather industry and the birth of the National Tannery in 1905. It shows that modernisation did not guarantee a linear process of professional and social mobility for the Chamars and the Chinese. Rather, through social stigma and spatial segregation in the Dhapa area of Calcutta, they struggled with their marginalised and conflicting identities. Chapter 2 follows the ramifications of the modernisation project through its related project of technical education between 1911 and 1940. It explores how by keeping the Chamars and the Chinese excluded, these projects maintained and preserved the inequality intrinsic to this industry and added a further dichotomy between skilled and unskilled workers. This further cemented the hierarchical positions of the three social groups associated with this industry. Chapter 3 traces the skilled-unskilled dichotomy to explore the nature of this industry, union leadership and the process of formation of working-class consciousness among the tanners of Calcutta. While the industrial proletariat in Calcutta aligned their grievances with nationalist struggle for independence in the 1940’s, tanners of Calcutta were struggling to organise themselves as ‘workers’. Chapter 4 examines the reasons for and consequences of the relocation of Calcutta tanneries from Dhapa to the Bantala Leather Industrial Complex in 1996. In the aftermath of this relocation, the new factory setting became the sphere within which managerial authority imposed new restrictions on the tanners. Therefore, working-class neighbourhoods became alternative spaces for workers to articulate their identity and attempt to invert managerial authority. By questioning the modernisation project, this thesis explores the complex relationships between the three social groups associated with this industry. Drawing theoretical insights from a wide array of South Asian labour history, this work draws attention to the previously understudied Calcutta tannery workers. This thesis contributes to the debates regarding caste-class dichotomy that South Asian labour history has been mired in. It asks if workers can be seen as a homogenous group or if we can accommodate fluidity and plurality of workers’ identities within the process of becoming class conscious. It concludes that the intersection of caste, ethnicity, class, and spatial politics constructed a multi-layered world for the workers of the Calcutta tanneries. They negotiated their consciousness within that space to construct multi-faceted identities. The unorganized nature of this industry resulted in archival marginalization of its workforce as well. So, this work faced serious challenges in finding archival sources on Calcutta tanners. To avoid writing a singular narrative that denies agency to the tanners, this work, in addition to archival sources, uses oral interviews with tannery workers as key primary sources.</p
Return to Papatūānuku: Investigating divine connection in an urban Aotearoa context through intersecting eco-feminist, anti-memorial, and indigenous landscape architectural knowledge
No full textEco-feminism and Mātauranga Māori are emergent research realms, becoming more prevalent internationally and within Aotearoa respectively, their common grounds based in ecological restoration, re-indigenising processes, fourth-wave feminism, and mana wāhine movements. This reciprocity between people and land reveal a gap in intersecting knowledge which landscape architects can address. Hence this thesis aims to research through design the ways landscape architects can foster divine connection between people and the environment within their cultural context.Aotearoa New Zealand experienced abrupt adaptation of the whenua (land) due to human settlement within a relatively small period compared to other colonised states, inflicting irreversible change. Matairangi Mount Victoria, located within Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington, is a direct physical reflection of this history, being an amalgamation of many presenting cultures and time periods within one geographically confined place. Through the whakapapa investigations of mnemonic effect, anti-memorials, and feminist urban theory within an atua framework, a process of historical analysis was utilized. At a range of wider scales, alongside personal tactile experimentation and hīkoi-based (walking-based) photographic fieldwork, this developed a personal process which emerged an innate divine feminine connection to the whenua within landscape architectural practice.Founded in a he awa whiria (braided river approach), a series of design typologies and strategic framework of Mount Victoria suburb unfolded. Made up of a family of typologies across four characterising streets encouraging soil movement, ecological restoration, de-paving, and revegetating native climbers, the urban environment encouraged a cohabitative process. These findings reiterate the importance for landscape architects to act as facilitators of public kaitiakitanga (guardianship), through the growing manaakitanga between the public, private, and whenua intergenerationally. This duty of care could hence be passed between designer, casual user, and personally connected dweller, to honour the whenua as she is.</p
The Proteome of Colorectal Carcinoma HCT-116 Cells Undergoing Oxidative Stress and Ferroptosis Induced by Iron Overloading
No full textFerroptosis is an iron-dependent form of regulated cell death that holds potential implications for cancer therapy. The occurrence of ferroptosis is due to iron-induced reactive oxygen species (ROS) accumulation that causes lipid peroxidation of the cellular membranes, leading to membrane rupture and cell death. However, the key question ‒ what level of ROS can induce ferroptosis and what are the underlying molecular mechanisms and the key molecular players involved ‒ remains to be answered. The present study is based on the hypothesis that there exists a critical threshold of ROS level in tumors that regulates the gene transcription of key regulatory genes that are responsible for redox homeostasis modulation and ferroptosis progression. The aim of the study is to reveal the ROS threshold at which ferroptosis occurs in tumors and the molecular mechanisms underlying as well as the protein markers to open up new therapeutic strategies to treat or prevent the development of the tumor. An in vitro cell model was used. Colorectal carcinoma HCT-116 cell line was cultured in the presence of a series of concentrations of ferric ammonium citrate (FAC), 0 mM (the control), 1 mM, 2mM, 5 mM, 10 mM, and 20 mM to induce various levels of ROS. Cell morphology, intracellular ROS levels, cell metabolic activity, cell proliferation, and malondialdehyde (MDA, a ferroptosis marker) levels were assessed to characterize the cells. The results showed that the intracellular ROS levels increased with the increase of FAC concentration. Low concentrations of FAC promoted cell metabolic activity, whereas high concentrations of FAC decreased cell metabolic activity but induced ferroptosis in HCT-116 cells. Morphological changes were also observed with the cells undergoing ferroptosis exhibiting rounding and detachment from the growth surface.Proteomic analysis was conducted for the control and FAC-exposed cells at various concentrations using liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) to identify protein changes in abundance. Up to 3,937 high-confidence proteins in a single LC-MS/MS analysis of the protein extract prepared from the cells treated with FAC at a specific concentration were identified, a total of 5,833 high-confidence proteins were identified from all three biological replicates of each FAC concentration condition and three LC-MS/MS technical replicates. Comparisons between the cells exposed to FAC at various concentrations versus the control group identified from 27 to 240 proteins (with a fold change of ≥ 2 or ≤ 0.5, with a p-value ≤ 0.05) that were statistically differential in abundance, some of which represent potential biomarkers warranting further investigation, including APP, APOA1, THFRSF10B, THBS1, SMPD4, KDSR, UBE3C, and WWP2. Pathway analyses of the differentially abundant proteins indicate that HCT-116 cells, in response to low ROS levels, upregulate lipid metabolism pathways to maintain membrane stability and resist ferroptosis, as evidenced by active membrane metabolic systems shown in the functional analysis. At moderate ROS levels, the cells adapt by upregulating cholesterol metabolism to preserve membrane integrity. However, at high ROS levels, there is a marked activation of ferroptosis and p53 signalling pathways, alongside a decline in sphingolipid metabolism and N-glycan biosynthesis. Functional analysis suggests that these changes are accompanied by a suppression of nuclear proteins and protein-binding functions, leading to disrupted intracellular communication and pushing the cell closer to death.Western blotting was performed to validate the proteomics data. The Western blotting results of APP and FTH1 were consistent with the corresponding LC-MS/MS results, respectively, which successfully validated the proteomics data. Moreover, the Western blotting provided additional information of APP that a phosphorylated form of APP was detected that appeared to have played an important role in promoting ferroptosis. In addition, the gene transcription factor p53 is proposed to play a role in inhibiting ferroptosis and the key antioxidation protein GPX4 was also analysed with Western blotting to gain information of their response to ROS levels.In summary, this thesis delineates the multifaceted response of HCT-116 cells to iron-induced oxidative stress and provides a detailed map of the proteomic changes that underlie the initiation and execution of ferroptosis. The findings offer a valuable foundation for the development of targeted therapies that leverage the ferroptosis pathway for the treatment of cancer.</p
A Clearing: Landscape, Permanence and the Interior
No full textInterior Architecture and Design in New Zealand has often been a by-product of the omnipotent “indoor-outdoor fucking flow” (Cheshire, 2015) between architecture and landscape. This dominant mode creates a systematic denial of interiority.How might my creative practice embrace interiority but still imbue the interior with qualities of the landscape? How might interior architecture and design venerate the unique and varied conditions of geology?Through a “Dynamic Reflection Model” (Blythe et al., 2013), research undertaken in practice, I have surveyed my lived experience and reflected on the fascinations and creative urges in my past, in the present, and for future projects at Knight Associates. I have analysed my Community of Practice and speculated on where the outcomes of this research may lead for my future creative practice.Through this process, I have explained how my creative practice responds to these questions by being both deeply invested in interiority, but equally grounded in the landscape. I have established a creative practice that brings the richness, variety, and permanence of the natural world into the interior. Through my body of work, rather than a biophillic response mimicking the forms found in nature, or framing the gaze across landscapes, I aim to treat interiority as a particular form of topography, a ‘clearing,’ through a dynamic of heightened material richness and reduced formal complexity.</p
Technical vocabulary in government spoken communications: The team of five million in bubbles, PPE and CBACs
No full textThe NewZealand government delivered regular 1 p.m. televised COVID-19 briefings from March 2020. These events had a crucial communicative function and were usually headed by top government and medical officials. This study focuses on technical vocabulary in a corpus made up of these briefings, including single words (grouped into technical word families) and acronyms (e.g., bubble and PPE) as well as the most frequent two to five-word multiword units (MWUs; e.g., case numbers, genomic sequencing, and chains of transmission) containing at least one technical single word family member. The corpus consists of 20 prepared speeches: 10 each in 2020 and 2021 by Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and Director-General of Health Dr. Ashley Bloomfield (50,782 tokens). The results showed that 6.02% of the single-word families (e.g., outbreak(-s), contact(-s/-less)) in the texts were technical, which may present a challenge for comprehension. Unsurprisingly, the Director-General of Health used moretechnical vocabulary than the Prime Minister. The top 20 MWUs containing technical vocabulary were identified in the corpus. Most were two-word collocations (e.g., negative test, testing centre/s,andnumber of tests). Implications for identifying and dealing with technical vocabulary in both government communications and language education are discusse
Reviving the he(art) of the city
No full textIn most Metropolitan cities around the world, creative art centres are built to enhance a sense of cultural identity in citizens and engage them in creative processes, which would encourage community bonding and the development of creative skills. However, New Zealand urban centers often lack such facilities that are open to the general public. Contemporary civic architecture also often fails to provide spatial experiences that are meaningful and inspiring. This project aimed to reintroduce meaningful and inspiring spatial experiences that encourage creative education in contemporary civic architecture.This thesis question is: How can architecture of a creative art centre be designed to encourage a creative learning development and increase a sense of social cohesion of the occupants?The thesis was broken into four parts, each addressing the research Aims and the following objectives. The first and second design stage investigated various drawing methods for the development of an architectural outcome that embodied creativity. This was explored through the iterative hand-drawing methods which tested approaches of Kazimir Malevich, Zaha Hadid and Bernard Tschumi. The goal was to use these drawing approaches for site research and analysis. Deeper contextual and programmatic understandings were researched and analysed to reconfigure the site drawings in the conceptual architectural outcome that would reflect the site’s unique identity. In the third stage, the focus shifted towards designing public spaces that would benefit the Art Centre community. This stage involved a narrative design approach to translate contextual concepts into architecture that prioritizes community-friendly experiences. The narrative approach was based on the theories of Penelope Haralambidou and Cathy Ganoe. The final design stage involved exploring phenomenological concepts to create spatial experiences that would inspire public engagement in creative learning processes. This involved reflection on a number of theories, including those by Özçam, Pallasmaa, Louv, Kolb, and others.</p
Housing The Future
No full textThe housing crisis in Aotearoa New Zealand, has been caused by a range of factors, including an increase in population and the use of housing as an investment asset. In response, the government has implemented several housing policy changes over the past ten years, with many aiming to allow intensification. While these policy changes have seen many new higher-density developments built, these often fail to consider the needs of children and families. In particular, many new housing developments lack adequate play spaces, outdoor spaces, and larger units. This research aims to explore how housing can be more suited to families with children, providing an alternative to existing intensification models. A selected site in Taita, Lower Hutt is the focus of this research, as Taita is a densifying suburb with a large demographic of families and children. Information from literature, case studies, fieldwork, site analysis, and design experimentation has been used. An iterative design process was conducted based on the collected data. These results and design ideas can be applied in other intensifying areas in Aotearoa New Zealand, enabling a wider demographic to have their needs met in higher-density housing.</p
A Review on Parametric and Semiparametric Distributions in Characterizing Synthetic Aperture Radar Clutter Data
No full textNo description supplie
Characterizing Complex Spatiotemporal Patterns from Entropy Measures
No full textIn addition to their importance in statistical thermodynamics, probabilistic entropy measurements are crucial for understanding and analyzing complex systems, with diverse applications in time series and one-dimensional profiles. However, extending these methods to two- and three-dimensional data still requires further development. In this study, we present a new method for classifying spatiotemporal processes based on entropy measurements. To test and validate the method, we selected five classes of similar processes related to the evolution of random patterns: (i) white noise; (ii) red noise; (iii) weak turbulence from reaction to diffusion; (iv) hydrodynamic fully developed turbulence; and (v) plasma turbulence from MHD. Considering seven possible ways to measure entropy from a matrix, we present the method as a parameter space composed of the two best separating measures of the five selected classes. The results highlight better combined performance of Shannon permutation entropy (SHp) and a new approach based on Tsallis Spectral Permutation Entropy (Sqs). Notably, our observations reveal the segregation of reaction terms in this SHp×Sqs space, a result that identifies specific sectors for each class of dynamic process, and it can be used to train machine learning models for the automatic classification of complex spatiotemporal patterns
The Missing Middle
No full textUrban population growth in large Australian and New Zealand cities has a significant impact on the way we design our cities. Despite evidence suggesting there is a common preference for standalone low-density houses among New Zealanders, affordability, land supply and attitudes towards urban sprawl pose significant constraints. To address this issue, proposed changes to Wellington’s District Plan aim to promote densification around transport nodes, predicated on the notion that building higher will enhance the economy and accommodate more people. Although many studies support this claim, equivocal strategies within Wellington’s growth frameworks suggest the basis for determining building heights is unprecedented; raising particular concern for the future liveability of our city. This research endeavors to critique how Wellington plans to accommodate the next 30 years of population growth, utilising data from Sense Partners and Wellington’s Proposed District Plan. Contrary to current proposals, this research anticipates that specific site constraints have not been adequately considered, necessitating the need for a new framework. Incorporating resident feedback through surveying local neighbourhoods and drawing insights from international models will serve as crucial indicators of how to enhance liveability, particularly for high-density residential buildings. Articulating a new plan for this typology is deemed essential to address existing gaps within current district plans, ensuring that densely populated neighbourhoods prioritise liveability.</p
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