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Aridity may alter the contributions of plants and fungi to grassland functions
No full textGrassland aridification threatens biodiversity which supports ecosystem multifunctionality (EMF), but the relative roles of biota in maintaining EMF are poorly known. A new study in PLoS Biology finds complementarity of above- and belowground biodiversity and a trade-off between fungal and plant richness in driving EMF with aridity
Optimizing the resistivity of colloidal SnO2 thin films by ion implantation and annealing
No full textTin oxide (SnO2) is a critical material for a wide range of applications, such as in perovskite solar cells, gas sensors, as well as for photocatalysis. For these applications the transparency to visible light, high availability, cheap fabrication process and high conductivity of SnO2 benefits its commercial deployment. In this paper, we demonstrate that the resistivity of widely colloidal SnO2 can be reduced by noble gas ion beam modification. After low energy argon implantation with a fluence of 4×1015 at.cm−2 at 25keV and annealing at 200°C in air, the resistivity of as-deposited film was reduced from (178±6)μΩcm to (133±5)μΩcm, a reduction of 25%. Hall effect measurements showed that the primary cause of this is the increase in carrier concentration from (8.1±0.3)×1020 cm−3 to (9.9±0.3)×1020 cm−3. Annealing at 200°C resulted in the removal of defect clusters introduced by implantation, while annealing at 300°C resulted in the oxidation of the films, increasing their resistivity. The concentration of oxygen vacancy defects can be controlled by a combination of low energy noble gas ion implantation and annealing, providing promising performance increases for potential applications of SnO2 where a low resistivity is crucial
Enhancing public research on citizen data: An empirical investigation of data synthesis using Statistics New Zealand’s Integrated Data Infrastructure
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Red in Tooth and Claw: Roman War-Making: An Evolutionary Perspective
No full textRome, during the period of the middle-Republic came of age as an imperial power. Yet, this trajectory from one-of-many city states of Latium to hegemon of the Mediterranean world was one that involved a complex mix of endogenous and exogenous factors. The objective of this thesis is to use evolutionary theory to re-examine this often-described phenomenon. The historiographical tradition related to this subject matter is long and fascinating but has, at times, fallen short of providing theories with not only explanatory power but with some form of scientific basis. International Relations theories (IR) have gone some way to contributing to this deficit by foregrounding the ecological factors that affected Rome’s interfacing with other groups of people in the Mediterranean. However, to produce a more nuanced explication of Roman aggression during this period, an evolutionary approach is both efficacious and beneficial. Humans are a product of evolution by natural selection; that is, we possess certain behaviours that are, to a degree, determined by genes in a particular environmental situation. Thus, from this perspective, the Romans were little different from contemporary cultures or even us. The ancient Mediterranean world of the middle-Republic was one of anarchy, self-help, and power maximization; it was a zero-sum world and so aggression was often adaptive. Nonetheless, learning and cultural transmission have become the true determinant of human behaviours, guided by and altering our evolved psychological mechanisms. Therefore, cultural processes did indeed make the Romans idiosyncratic in many respects. Humans are highly social, and we evolved in a small group environment. Multilevel selection tells us that selfishness is often a successful strategy within a group, but groups that are constituted of altruistic members, and are thus integrated, will out-compete groups of selfish individuals. This is, in a nutshell, the key to Roman success. Roman society evolved norms and institutions that created a society that was highly amalgamated and focused on acting for the good of the state because that was also beneficial to the individual in tangible ways. Service to the state could bring political power, prestige, and wealth to one’s family and it could be generational. Moreover, Rome itself was the product of cultural group selection; in short, its norms and institutions were more adapted to be successful in inter-group competition. To be sure, this need not be conflict, but in the ecological conditions of the time, it often was. One externality that is emphasised in this thesis is the shared frontier with the Gauls, as well as the lesser frontier with the Etruscans. Frontiers are where potential empires were formed because of the highly intensive and volatile conditions which drive groups towards higher solidarity. My overall objective of this thesis is to highlight that the Romans were, like all species, a product of their genes, culture, life history and ecology. They were both all-to human, and, at times, exceptional in there expression of their humanity.</p
New Zealand Renaissance: Romantic and Modernist Origins of a Cultural Nationalism, 1930–1960
No full textAlthough much has been written about New Zealand’s cultural nationalism, rarely have scholars sought to understand why a cultural nationalism occurred at all. Taking up the origins of New Zealand’s cultural nationalism as its central question, this thesis explores the ways that ideas of nationalism formed and spread in the minds of New Zealand’s artists and writers. It finds that nationalism formed often unwittingly, through the search for a modernism that sought to restore the human spirit after the simultaneous devastations of war and secularisation. Key cultural figures in New Zealand looked backwards—to the Romantic era, to the American Renaissance, and to the English Musical Renaissance—in order to assert spiritual connections between the nation and the natural world. The Romantic Modernism these figures enacted led to the incidental assertion of national identity in New Zealand, as it did elsewhere.Broadly chronological, the thesis begins by reconsidering the supposed break between New Zealand’s two eras of cultural nationalism, one in the late nineteenth century—the so-called “Maoriland” nationalism—and the other between 1930 and 1960. It ends in the 1950s as Colin McCahon and James K. Baxter sought to spiritualise the New Zealand landscape by drawing on preexisting romantic habits of mind. In-between, the thesis considers how various New Zealand “nationalist” figures—J. C. Beaglehole, E. H. McCormick, Douglas Lilburn, Rita Angus, Leo Bensemann, Frances Hodgkins and Charles Brasch—participated in a burgeoning resistance to metropolitan modernism’s uniformity and de-spiritualisation. Many of these figures were educated in England into a Romantic Modernism, through which they learned to see their cultural aims in moral and spiritual–religious terms: as guiding a public towards a more honest and unmediated relationship with people and the natural world. This alternative genealogy of New Zealand’s cultural nationalism suggests new ways of reading the period, and of connecting Pākeha New Zealand’s 1930–1960 search for national identity to similar searches elsewhere.</p
Sustainability Transition Framework: An Integrated Conceptualisation of Sustainability Change
No full textResponding to calls for climate action, this article develops and introduces a Sustainability Transition Framework (STF), which is a high-level interpretation of the complex dynamics dominating the current historical moment characterised by an aspiration for accelerated climate action and challenges with implementing change. This STF brings together and integrates a set of theories about change which were developed in different disciplines and not commonly discussed at the same time. The four key theories are: (1) sustainability transitions, transition management and related theories which consider the necessary change in sociotechnical regimes; (2) diffusion of innovation theory, which provides a high-level overview of patterns with uptake of innovation; (3) a change curve which explains complex emotional experiences when facing organisational change; and (4) a conceptualisation of the style cycle, which is commonly used in the history of art and architecture. These are visually depicted and integrated into a novel STF diagram. The STF presents one of the most comprehensive integrations of currently available knowledge on how change happens, which is essential for accelerated climate action. The STF helps understand individual or social group experiences. Through an improved understanding of the sustainability transition, the STF empowers climate action
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