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Microwave moisture levelling of lucerne chaff
No full textThis project has seen the development of a low cost method of microwave drying of lucerne chaff prior to packaging and distribution. Lucerne has long been used as a high protein food source for livestock in particular for horses fed in the form of a dry chaff. The process of harvesting the lucerne is complicated by the long drying times prior to baling. This requires that the weather remains fine and no rain occurs during this period, as rain on the cut lucerne causes loss of colour and higher than target moisture contents which has the effect of poor shelf life and loss of colour.
By exploiting the drying capability of microwave heating a low cost prototype was designed to reduce the moisture content of the lucerne post chopping down below 10% whilst maintaining the green colour. The designed system consists of seven individual magnetrons providing 1.2kW each of heating power to the chaff on a conveyor belt moving at 0.5m/s. Individual cavities were designed so as to allow the conveyor to move product through the system whilst avoiding adverse interactions occurring between the individual magnetrons. The constructed system has been constructed and trialled at Putaruru Lucerne and has clearly demonstrated the concept. On one trial the lucerne chaff moisture content was reduced from an unstable 14% down to 9% which substantially extends the shelf life of the end product. This system also means that the lucerne can be baled days earlier at a much higher moisture content removing the current issues around weather stabilit
Moving to the future: Incorporating ulstrasound as a teaching tool of anatomy to medical imaging students
No full textINTRODUCTION
Undergraduate medical imaging education has recently moved towards making anatomy course content directly applicable to future clinical practice. Teaching anatomy to medical imaging students can prove challenging. Being a “dry subject” the link between theory and practice is not always appreciated by students. Furthermore, the use of cadaveric dissection as a teaching tool is rare [1]. In recent years with the advancement of technology, integration of imaging technology within anatomy courses in health science programmes, has become an essential component in supporting student learning [2]. Ultrasound is considered one of the safest imaging technologies, utilising ultrasonic waves to form images of the internal human anatomy[3]. Ultrasound provides realtime regional visualization of the gross anatomical structures in two-dimensional and non-irradiating ways to study the body organs[4]. This provides an opportunity for students to study living anatomy through ultrasound utilisation
Animating the future of urban transportation in Auckland: How can the practice of animation help to promote environmentally sustainable choices in urban transportation in Auckland / New Zealand?
No full textThis exegesis mainly documents the whole process and ideas of my design of this animation. The background of this document is based on the fact that animation has always been a widely used propaganda technique, but now the environmental problems caused by traffic congestion have aroused widespread attention around the world. I believe that animation as an art form can be better to convey the rules and norms of politeness, civilization and culture. The main theme of this animation is to study how to engage the audience's thinking on environmental issues and to inspire the audience's new ideas on the sustainable transportation development. The main research methodology of this article is practice-based research. I divided my research into story structure, metaphors and symbols, anti-hero archetypes, and visual language. The result of this animation can be predicted to inspire viewers new ideas when traveling in personal traffic to a certain extent
Museum of water: How can a water museum articulate New Zealand's tangible and intangible connection to water?
No full textThis project explores the design of Aotearoa's first water museum located along Te Awa Tupua (The Whanganui River), the first river in the world to be granted personhood status. The museum will help preserve and showcase the tangible and intangible aspects of Te Awa Tupua – while symbolically remembering its history of colonial transgressions. A whakatauki among the people of Whanganui, ‘Ko au te awa. Ko te awa ko au – I am the river. The river is me’ reverberates the level of empathy and connection these people feel towards their river. The strength, spirit and identity of Whanganui Iwi all stem from the river.
The research uses New Zealand's ongoing freshwater crisis to call for more honest public education and engagement with mātauranga Māori – helping aid the struggle towards a broader cultural shift inspired by Wairuatanga. The research benefited tremendously from the richness of pūrākau and whakapapa. This research attempts to rationalise the whakapapa of freshwater and use it as an anchor to the intangible aspects of wai. A pivotal part of this project relies on identifying a set of relevant principles that can instruct the design process—essentially giving a structure to the project's rationale. Principles from Te Awa Tupua, Te Aranga Māori, and Swiss architect Peter Zumthor are superimposed to guide the design process. The design process began with a trip down the rivers waters. The three-day canoe trip through the Whanganui National Park's isolated depths heavily impacted the museum's experiential design.
Whanganui Māori would use fishing structures called Pā tuna, Pā Piharu, and Tararua for fishing Tuna and Piharu – upon the arrival of the early European settler, these structures were destroyed to make way for the steamboat travel. The project seeks to commemorate these destroyed fishing weirs; Matia (stakes in weir fences) inspire the museum's structure as it sits on burnt wooden columns. The museum orientates itself towards Matua Te Toa Tongariro (Mount Tongariro) and Te Tai-o-Rēhua (Tasman Sea) – referencing the idea that Te Awa Tupua is an indivisible and living whole from the mountain to the sea
A framework for analysis and comparison of deepfakes detection methods
No full textWith the rise of AI (Artificial Intelligence), people can already utilise Deepfakes technology to generate fake pictures and videos increasingly. Similar to all technologies, while bringing benefits, this technology also has its downsides, such as spreading false information and endangering public interests. In order to combat the harm of fake-face videos, researchers have proposed a variety of different deep forgery detection algorithms, and have achieved remarkable results. However, a common problem regarding these detection methods are that in-library detection can normally achieve high accuracy, but the performance severely degraded in cross-library detection. That is to say, there is a serious problem of insufficient generalisation ability.
The current mainstream detection method is to train a binary classification model on real videos and fake videos, and classify real videos and tampered videos through a classifier to distinguish true and false. In other words, Deepfakes detection is based on the evaluation criteria of the binary classification model to evaluate the performance of various detection methods. However, each evaluation criteria will have a different emphasis on different application scenarios and technical requirements. That is to say, using only some kind of single evaluation criteria cannot effectively compare the performance of different detection methods. In current literature, Deepfakes detection usually uses only the Area Under Curve (AUC) in the binary classification model as the evaluation standard. Nevertheless, AUC focuses on only the relative size of the probability value, and it does not consider the absolute size of the threshold and probability value. Moreover, when the data is very uneven, AUC may not properly assess the performance of the detection method.
To better compare the performance differences between various detection methods, this thesis provides analysis and comparison on the six Deepfakes detection methods of Two-stream, MesoNet, HeadPose, FWA, VA and Multi-task. To assess generalisation ability of these methods, I conduct intra-library and cross-library tests on the existing three fake face video datasets. For this purpose, accuracy (ACC) and error rate are used as evaluation criteria in this thesis and I will focus on analysing the impacts of three factors (dataset partitioning, data augmentation operations, and the detection threshold selection) on the generalisation ability of the Deepfakes detection methods.
Thus, the principal contributions of this thesis outline as follows: 1) an analytical crosslibrary platform for comparison of Deepfakes detection methods; 2) proposing new evaluation metrics based on data partitioning, augmentation, and threshold selection; 3) providing an overall performance indication of detection methods based on their generalisation performance on different data types
Land stewardship in the climate wrung epoch
No full textQUESTION:
How can vulnerable land be turned into adaptive land that is ‘safe’ for communities?
This paper discusses a student research by design project, undertaken as the culmination of a Bachelor of Landscape Architecture degree. The project used theories and principles from resilience thinking as a lens of inquiry, and guidelines for redefining vulnerable coastal land in Onehunga industrial zones undergoing urban development. Asking the question How can vulnerable land be turned into adaptive land that is ‘safe’ for communities? The project explores ways to prototype and test resilience ideas that re-examine and redefine everyday lives, challenge the status quo, and integrate living, working, playing and land stewarding. Key design moves were based on the understanding of complex adaptive social-ecological systems, from individual community members to society as a whole, are embedded in the biosphere and dependent on its life-supporting capacity. By hypothetically testing an alternative way of living, and through a shared process of learning, a new land-use agenda that incubates everyday forms of resilience would emerge, and a downshift mindset promoted by acquired skills would transcend the economic growth driven paradigm that is no longer adaptive and appropriate for the climate change wrung epoch: the Anthropocene.
The design project focus is on the coastal industrial land between Onehunga Mall and Captain Spring Road
Construction students' experiences and engagement with digital technologies
No full textAim of the research
The digital natives’ narrative in tertiary education
Digital technology integration in construction education
Research context
Research approach
Research findings
Conclusions and future directions
Reference
Attaining better employee engagement and a positive work culture through transformational leadership
No full textRESEARCH OBJECTIVES
1 To identify how an organisation can achieve better employee engagement with a positive work culture
2. To examine employee engagement in the workplace by focusing on key drivers, for example, work behavioural patterns, loyalty and organisational connectedness
3. To examine factors that foster employee empowerment at the workplace
4. To ascertain whether transformational leadership in organisations can enhance overall employee engagement and motivation
ABSTRACT
The research area in focus for this study was the public health sector of New Zealand. District Health Board employee engagement, empowerment practices were examined throughout New Zealand DHBs. Northland District Health Board was the chosen specific research area from which respondents for the research questionnaire and Zoom video interviews were selected. The overall purpose of this study was to explore the impact of transformational leadership on employee engagement, motivation and empowerment. The research design for this study utilised mixed, qualitative and quantitative methods. The chosen approach and tools for gathering data consisted of survey questionnaires and an online video interview on the Zoom platform. The findings for objective one showed NDHB needed to address employee disengagement behaviours and patterns to achieve a positive organisational culture. The findings for research objective two confirmed that organisational connectedness and employee loyalty was essential and valued by most interviewees. Employees wanted an organisational culture based on mutual respect from management and staff. Transparent communication and ongoing training initiatives for employee empowerment were also highlighted; transformational leadership was crucial for employee engagement initiatives in NDHB. Previous empirical literature and thematic analysis of video interviews and questionnaires highlighted in the study’s findings the need for effective transformational leadership in NDHB. Recommendation for practice would be to implement robust dedicated support systems, ongoing professional development, mentoring programmes, and meaningful employee reward schemes to mitigate employee disengagements and burnouts
Voice of the voiceless: Empowering young people through music
No full textRESEARCH QUESTION
How can a community performing arts centre empower young people through the learning, making, and performance of music?
ABSTRACT
Young people typically struggle to find a place within society where their voice is heard. Music can empower adolescents to express themselves and find a path to self-discovery that can positively influence individual and communal outcomes. However, safe, age-appropriate spaces for young people to participate in these cultural explorations are in short supply, as is the ability to access affordable musical instruments and lessons. How can a community performing arts centre empower young people through the learning, making, and performance of music?
Critical theories of empowerment, community and music include the works of Peter Hopkins, Robert A. Cutietta and Ian Appleton. Hopkins discusses the misrepresentation of young people in societal decision-making and the challenging relationship with adults in a communal context. Cutietta examines the requirements of young people engaging with music and the resources available outside of schools, whilst Appleton addresses the functional and technical requirements associated with the learning, making, and performance of music.
This research project investigates whether a community performing arts centre, in conjunction with a smaller mobile performance intervention, can empower young people by introducing school-aged students to a variety of musical experiences within the master-planned greenfield development of Auranga in West Drury, Auckland. The project analysed the current themes, precedents/case studies, and specific conditions of the site in which these theories will be applied.
The research undertaken identified the programme and associated spatial requirements for music learning, making, and performance in conjunction with social and cultural design aims/objectives that underpin the project. The established set of aims/objectives were used during design development to test theories and ideas, consequently leading to a resolved outcome
Exercise classes for falls prevention: Older men’s participation and perspectives
No full textRESEARCH QUESTION
How can older men be better engaged in falls prevention exercise classes and programmes?
ABSTRACT
Exercise classes remain a common and recommended evidence-based intervention in falls prevention. Much of the literature supports the effectiveness of classes to reduce falls in community dwelling adults and adherence rates remain relatively high. However, estimations are that women outnumber men 3:1 in classes and reasons for this are not clear. Most studies in falls prevention have included only female participants and few have specifically reported on gender perspectives regarding class participation. This study aims to explore why there are fewer men than women attending exercise classes for falls prevention.
The literature review in Chapter 2 highlights the gap involving older men in falls prevention research and explores how underlying beliefs and values in society, such as masculinity, can influence uptake and engagement in health services. In Chapter 3, the findings from the original study, as part of this thesis, are outlined. Firstly, that men are less likely to report falls and will try to reduce their falls risk in other ways. Secondly, the men also felt that classes are mostly aimed at women, therefore would not feel comfortable attending. The main conclusion from this thesis is that exercise classes for falls prevention do not meet the needs of older men and attendance rates for men will continue to be low compared to women. It is recommended that further research be conducted with older men to develop and explore options that do work for them to reduce the risk and rate of falls amongst the older population. This thesis adds to an emerging body of literature that falls prevention programmes need to reflect a gender perspective and approach