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The training and tapering practices of highland games heavy event athletes.
No full textThis study provides the first empirical evidence of how Highland Games heavy event athletes train and taper for Highland Games competitions. Athletes (n = 169) (mean ± SD: age 40.8 ± 10.7 years, height 181.2 ± 9.5 cm, weight 107.2 ± 23.0 kg, 18.8 ± 10.3 years of general resistance training, and 8.1 ± 6.9 years of competitive Highland Games experience) completed a self-reported 4-page online survey on training and tapering practices. Analysis by sex (male and female) and competitive standard (local or regional, national, and international) was conducted. Seventy-eight percent (n = 132) of athletes reported that they used a taper. Athletes stated that their taper length was 5.2 ± 3.5 days, with the step (36%) and linear tapers (33%) being the most performed. Athletes reported that their highest training volume and intensity were 5.5 and 3.8 weeks out (respectively) from competition, and all training ceased 2.4 ± 1.4 days before competition. Training volume decreased during the taper by 34%. Athletes typically stated that, tapering was performed to achieve recovery, peak performance, and injury prevention; training intensity, frequency, and duration stayed the same or decreased; game-specific training increased with reductions in traditional exercises; the caber toss, weight for height, and heavy weight throw were performed further out from competition than other events; muscular power and strength were the most common types of training performed; static stretching, foam rolling, and massage were strategies used in the taper; and poor tapering occurred because of life/work circumstances, lack of sleep/rest, or training too heavy/hard. These results may aid Highland Games athletes to optimize training and tapering variables leading to improved performances
Expert consensus for smoking cessation with metaverse in medicine
No full textThe IAMM (International Association for Metaverse in Medicine) and the Shanghai Association of Tobacco Control collaborated to establish the Metaverse-Assisted Smoking Cessation Consensus Committee, which consisted of doctors specializing in smoking cessation and technical engineers. Through a combination of evidence-based and consensus building methods, the draft consensus was developed to support smoking cessation efforts and enhance overall health. Refinements to the consensus were made through a series of expert group meetings, conducted both online and off-line, following the creation of the initial draft. Additionally, generative techniques were utilized to produce illustrations that complemented the consensus. All expert group members involved in shaping the consensus have no conflicts of interest related to its content
Ihirangaranga: Forest and sound bathing in Rangimārie Pā Harakeke
No full text[...] Of particular relevance to the Tūwhitia Symposium 2024 focus on Ākonga success is He, M. et al. (2024) findings that “walking in campus forest environments, in combination with mindfulness exercises and sensory perception practices, constitutes a core element of forest therapy for students, serving as a convenient, cost-effective, and noticeably effective therapeutic approach for physical and mental health management.
[Tanya White now known as Hinewaimarama Reihana-White
Automating medical imaging rosters: Lessons and challenges from implementation of AI-lead self-rostering with RosterLab
No full textOVERVIEW
Manual to AI-rostering transition
Existing rostering context and challenges
Impacts addressed through RosterLab's tec
Digital Media and Charity Shops: A Case Study Approach
No full textPurpose: This research aims to explore the role of digital media in charity shops in New Zealand to elevate sales, engage volunteers, and facilitate usable donations.
Methodology: This research adopts a case study design and employs a mixed-methodapproach. The quantitative data was collected through two questionnaires, one for volunteers and the other for shoppers and donors who have engaged in charity shops within the last 12 months. Additionally, qualitative data was obtained through document Analysis of nine charity organisations' websites and Facebook pages. This research was undertaken as per the ethical guidelines set by the Southern Institute of Technology (SIT).
Findings: The study revealed the current landscape of digital media usage in charity shops in New Zealand. While findings confirm a general awareness of charity shops’ digital media presence, they also reveal a notable lack of effective engagement strategies by charity shops across these channels. Facebook and Charity Organisation’s websites emerged as the most preferred medium for seeking information among shoppers. However, a significant gap is noted concerning volunteers’ appreciation, updates on new merchandise, and donation guidelines.
Conclusion: Charity shops as social enterprises serve their parent organisation to raise money by selling donated goods with the help of supportive volunteers. Effective digital media utilisation on the part of charity shops should be considered a viable option for creating engagement.
Recommendations: The research highlights the significance of addressing the digital literacy gap, providing staff training, and implementing centralised strategies to leverage the maximum impact of digital media in charity shops in New Zealand
The Influence of Organisational Culture on Project Portfolio Management Practices in Healthcare
No full textThis study aims to measure the effect of organisational culture on the effectiveness of project portfolio management (PPM) practices. Organisational culture dictates practices, processes, values, guidelines, and rules that facilitate individuals in performing their routine tasks. Organisational culture influences employee behaviour and their way of working by providing a conducive work environment. Thus, managers are able to delegate better while ensuring a balanced workload, collaborative team efforts, and prudent resource allocation to achieve desired project portfolio deliverables. The study was performed on a sample of 35 individuals working in a data and digital unit of a healthcare organisation in New Zealand. Convenience sampling was used to gather data. Responses were collected through email surveys, and regression analysis was performed in IBM SPSS Statistics to test the research hypothesis. Results highlight that a supportive organisational culture has a significant tendency to encourage managers to effectively execute project portfolio management practices. Analysis also shows that other dimensions of organisational culture—managing change, achieving goals, coordinator team, customer orientation, and cultural strength—have a positive effect on the effectiveness of PPM practices. This study facilitates directors, strategists, and managers in taking steps to form a culture that ensures effective execution of PPM practices to achieve better results. There is a need to generalize the findings of this study by conducting it in different countries and industries. Future researchers could perform this study using larger samples and varying research methodologies
World-building with fleece and foam: Development of a New Zealand children’s television pilot in the international television landscape
No full textRESEARCH QUESTION
What can be learned from synthesising the storytelling elements of international children's series popular with New Zealand audiences into the development of an original narrative New Zealand children’s television pilot?
ABSTRACT
Children today are exposed to a barrage of media from an early age, all of which competes for their attention. One time-tested competitor in this arena is children’s television, which, being among the very first media that children consume, can, and often does, provide them with important learning (Fisch, 2004). Hahn (2022) notes, for example, that children are able to learn moral values from popular media if having a set of moral values is portrayed within the narrative as being socially desirable (Hahn, 2022). But to what degree does children’s television connect its viewers with their own locality, with their own culture? In New Zealand, where much of the children’s television produced is targeted specifically toward a New Zealand audience, over half of children surveyed say that they feel good when they watch stories about New Zealand (Colmar Brunton, 2020). Despite this, however, the majority of New Zealand children are watching international series on international platforms (Colmar Brunton, 2020). Where is the disconnect?
This research explores an approach to enabling New Zealand children’s television to reach its intended audience: the children of New Zealand. By analysing international series that are popular with New Zealand children, a list was assembled of the various techniques that these series employ to engage their young viewership. Using practice-based research, this project endeavours to apply these techniques - here, referred to as Storytelling Elements - to the development of an original children’s television pilot that weaves local attributes and culture into its characters and narrative. Efforts in screenwriting, constructing puppets and sets, shooting, and editing have culminated in a proof-of-concept pilot.
The pilot can be viewed here: https://bit.ly/LookOutPenny-CalumLyall
In this research there is observations of the effects integrating the Storytelling Elements had on the creative process and on personal considerations regarding cultural representation. Implementing the Storytelling Elements had profound effects on self-reflection, encouraged consistent consideration of the audience, and sparked ingenuity within a small-scale production
Aotearoa New Zealand student nurses’ perceptions of working in aged care: August 2024
No full textSupporting an ageing population is a globally recognised challenge (United Nations, 2020; World Health Organization, 2023). In the next ten years, the healthcare sector in Aotearoa New Zealand will confront this significant issue as the number of older adults markedly increases (Stats NZ, 2020). By 2036 over a quarter of the population of New Zealand will be over 65 years old (Te Pou o te Whakaaro Nui, 2019.) This demographic shift warrants significant attention because of increasing longevity and the number of older adults that will be living with complex or multiple diagnoses requiring supportive healthcare. As a consequence of technological and medical advances, adults will be living longer with chronic illness and the effects of ageing.
Nurses are at the front line of healthcare and are ideally placed to respond to the changing demographic. It is imperative, therefore, that we understand how well we are preparing nurses for doing the work that will be required. As educators, we need to understand what curriculum developments might be needed to support a well-prepared future nursing workforce (Heath et al, 2023).
This is the second of three reports about the future nursing workforce and aged care, in which student nurses’ perceptions of working with older adults are examined. In conjunction with the earlier report on the stocktake of clinical placements, these findings will form the basis of the final phase of the research, a consultation with the profession and broader community about their views on what should be included about older adult healthcare in pre-registration nursing programmes. It will be our opportunity to ensure the readiness of our future nursing workforce in Aotearoa New Zealand
Beehive bioacoustics noise reduction using liquid neural networks
No full textMonitoring the health and activity of bee colonies has become increasingly crucial in recent years, owing to bees' critical role in pollination and their worrisome drop in population. Beehive sound analysis is a promising tool for non-invasively measuring beehive health. However, these auditory waves are noisy, making precise assessment difficult. This thesis investigates the application of advanced artificial neural network architectures for denoising beehive sounds, with a focus on the comparative performance of Convolutional Neural Networks, Long Short-Term Memory networks, and Liquid Time-Constant networks, with a particular emphasis on Liquid Time-Constant Networks, which have been recently proposed by researchers. Liquid Neural Networks, exemplified by Liquid Time-Constant neural networks, are inspired by the brain's continuous-time processing and have demonstrated significant adaptability and robustness.
The work begins with the collection and preprocessing of beehive audio data, which is then used to develop and train Convolutional Neural Networks, Long Short-Term Memory networks, and Liquid Neural Networks models. To improve denoising capabilities, each model goes through a rigorous hyperparameter tuning procedure that includes learning rate optimization and batch normalization. The major goal is to assess the real-world applicability of Liquid Time-Constant networks by comparing model performance in terms of noise reduction effectiveness and computing efficiency. According to experimental results, while Convolutional Neural Networks have basic denoising capabilities, they are outperformed by both Long Short-Term Memory networks and Liquid Time-Constant networks. Long Short-Term Memory networks perform better in addressing temporal dependencies in audio signals, resulting in the best overall denoising outcomes. However, Liquid Neural Networks with Liquid Time- Constant networks perform similarly to Long Short-Term Memory networks and greatly outperform Convolutional Neural Networks. The Liquid Neural Networks show special potential due to their dynamic adaptability capabilities and robustness in dealing with shifting noise levels.
This study demonstrates the viability of Liquid Neural Networks as a competitive and economical solution for real-world audio denoising applications, particularly in the context of beehive health monitoring. While Liquid Time-Constant networks fall short of Long Short-Term Memory networks in terms of regression performance, they outperformed Convolutional Neural Networks. The models' performance was largely measured using Mean Squared Error and Signal-to-Noise Ratio, two key metrics for audio denoising tasks. They have significant advantages in model simplicity and adaptability, making them an important tool in environmental monitoring and advanced auditory signal processing. This thesis contributes to the developing field of neural network applications in environmental monitoring and establishes the framework for future research in this area by offering a breakthrough in adaptive, real-time audio denoising using novel Liquid Time Constants for crucial applications like beehive health assessment by surpassing traditional models in both adaptability and efficiency
Evaluation of HTTP DDOS cyber attack on web servers Apache and Nginx
No full textDDoS attack is one of the most common cyber-attacks. Usually, attackers will manipulate zombie hosts distributed in different geographical locations to send thousands of network messages to flood servers or network devices, occupying and consuming the resources of these network devices or systems, making them unable to respond to subsequent Requests from normal users. This cyber-attack has caused enormous economic and reputational losses to enterprises and institutes. However, there is currently no particularly ideal solution to this cyber issue. Among many DDoS attacks, application-layer DDoS attacks have been favoured by hackers in recent years. Application layer DDoS is mainly realized by sending a large amount of HTTP or HTTPS to the web server; this type of attack is also referred to as the HTTP DDoS Flood attack. Currently, many popular web servers are on the market, among which Nginx and Apache are the most used; these web servers have different concurrency resistance. Therefore, it is necessary to evaluate the performance of web servers under real HTTP DDoS.
This thesis reviewed typical DDoS attacks and then focused on HTTP DDoS Flood attacks at the application layer. We used a real testbed to evaluate the latest version of Linux Ubuntu22.04 operating system and the latest versions of Apache and Nginx through four key indicators: Transactions Per Second (TPS), Average Response Time, HTTP Requests Error Rate and CPU Utilization. The impact of the HTTP DDoS Flood attack on the performance of two web servers was analysed. This study focused on implementing five mitigation measures for Apache and Nginx and evaluating their effectiveness in mitigating HTTP DDoS Flood attacks. For Apache, the implemented measures include Mod_limitipconn, Mod_evasive, Fail2ban, Rate Limiting and Load Balancing. On Nginx, the mitigations adopted are limit_conn + limit_req, Mod_Security, Fail2ban, Rate Limiting and Load Balancing.
This study concluded that a web server’s ability to handle legitimate Requests dropped significantly during HTTP DDoS Flood attacks. Nginx performed better than Apache in resisting HTTP DDoS Flood attacks due to its superior architectural design. In terms of mitigation measures, whether on Apache or Nginx, Fail2ban and Load Balancing were the most effective strategies, while other measures were relatively weak compared to these two. This shows that a better defence effect was only achievable by completely blocking malicious Requests from reaching the web server or by enhancing the server’s flexibility in handling concurrent Requests