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Leptospirosis, melioidosis, and rickettsioses in the vicious circle of neglect.
Get PDFThe global priorities in the field of infectious diseases are constantly changing. While emerging viral infections have regularly dominated public health attention, which has only intensified after the COVID-19 pandemic, numerous bacterial diseases have previously caused, and continue to cause, significant morbidity and mortality-deserving equal attention. Three potentially life-threatening endemic bacterial diseases (leptospirosis, melioidosis, and rickettsioses) are a huge public health concern especially in low- and middle-income countries. Despite their continued threat, these diseases do not receive proportionate attention from global health organizations and are not even included on the WHO list of neglected tropical diseases (NTDs). This, in turn, has led to a vicious circle of neglect with continued, yet conceivably preventable, hospitalizations and deaths each year especially in the vulnerable population. This is a call from a group of multi-institutional experts on the urgent need to directly address the circle of neglect and raise support in terms of funding, research, surveillance, diagnostics, and therapeutics to alleviate the burden of these 3 diseases.fals
Stratigraphy and lithosedimentological properties of subplinian eruptions from Mt. Taranaki, New Zealand, encompassed by the Ngaere and Pungarehu edifice collapses
Get PDFThe sudden removal of large portions of a volcanic edifice through collapse can cause depressurisation in the subvolcanic magmatic system, influencing the nature of subsequent eruptions. At Mt. Taranaki, edifice failure has occurred frequently and at different timescales throughout the volcanic history, forming a broad pattern of cyclic collapse and regrowth. About 20–30,000 years ago, Mt. Taranaki experienced two such cycles in short succession, emplacing the 27.3 ka Ngaere and the 24.8 ka Pungarehu debris-avalanche deposits, which were preceded and followed by a sequence of twenty-eight closely spaced tephra deposits known as the Poto and Paetahi Formations. Here, we reconstruct the tephrastratigraphic framework of the Poto and Paetahi Formations, revealing a minimum total eruptive volume of 3 km3. While eruptions directly following edifice failure were larger compared to those prior to collapse, this 4,000-year long eruptive period was characterised by consistently large subplinian eruptions. In contrast, large explosive events within the Holocene sequence are less frequent, with more multi-phase periods of effusive and explosive activity recorded. Our new data highlights the need to include longer-term eruptive records in volcanic hazard modelling since the most recent volcanic history might not cover the full nature of volcanic processes occurring at long-lived stratovolcanoes.fals
Non-destructive and on-site estimation of grape total soluble solids by field spectroscopy and stack ensemble learning
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Metabarcoding captures genetic diversity and links cases in outbreaks of cryptosporidiosis in New Zealand.
Get PDFCryptosporidiosis is a disease caused by the parasite Cryptosporidium. Globally, it is a leading cause of diarrhoea and a notifiable disease in New Zealand. Molecular analyses of Cryptosporidium isolated from notified cases do not always provide support for epidemiological links between individuals. We hypothesised this could be due to undetected diversity and the use of consensus Sanger sequence analyses. Here, we analysed 105 Cryptosporidium samples from outbreaks and sporadic cases occurring between 2010 and 2018 in New Zealand using both Next-Generation Sequencing (NGS) and Sanger sequencing of the glycoprotein 60 (gp60) locus. NGS metabarcoding at the gp60 locus uncovered significant intra- and inter-sample genotypic diversity in outbreaks and identified subtypes shared by epidemiologically linked cases, along with rare subtypes, suggesting it may be a useful tool for epidemiological investigations.fals
Do you remember? Consumer reactions to health-related information on snacks in repeated exposure
Get PDFHealth-related information on pre-packed food products can enhance purchase intention and healthy choices. However, retained positive influence of health-related information on product liking is necessary to help consumers make informed decisions about a healthy diet in the long term. According to information-reduction theory, consumers reduce the amount of information that is processed in repeated exposure. Hence, increasing familiarity with a product could lead to increased levels of ignoring health-related information and an increasing reliance on product experience-based associations. These effects were tested in a laboratory study, involving actual food tasting and repeated exposure across two sessions. Participants (N = 154) were invited to evaluate yoghurts with and without health-related information with a screen representation of the product packaging. Differences in product evaluations and attention paid to health-related information between the two sessions were recorded using both implicit and explicit methods. Findings reveal that, despite a decrease in visual attention to health-related information, the perceived healthiness of the products remained stable. However, consumers reported lower perceived tastiness when health-related information was present. The findings underscore the importance of compelling taste experiences, as taste beliefs, in contrast to health beliefs, consistently influenced product liking. Finally, the findings emphasised the need for a comprehensive understanding of consumer reactions to healthier food products that considers both implicit and explicit responses.fals
Novel methodology for resilience assessment of critical infrastructure considering the interdependencies: A case study in water, transportation and electricity sector
Get PDFCritical Infrastructures (CI) are vital for societal and economic stability, yet their resilience against disasters remains inadequately understood with the increasing interdependencies among the CIs. A better understanding of these interdependencies and the dynamic nature of CI functionalities is crucial for advancing disaster resilience assessment within engineering systems. This paper introduces a novel approach using a Dynamic Bayesian Network (DBN) to assess resilience in interdependent CI systems. The DBN method enables a probabilistic evaluation of system resilience by incorporating interdependencies and capturing the temporal dynamics of system capacities. This approach offers a more detailed perspective on resilience by modelling system functionality using expected values of different functionality states over time. Using a case study in Sri Lankan electricity, water distribution, and road infrastructure sectors and 34 experts, this study examines the complex network of CIs. It demonstrates the applicability of the proposed methodology. P-values of the Chi-Square test performed between the variation of model-predicted resilience and expert assessments are significantly less than 0.05, confirming the model's validity. Additionally, this study explores the expansion of the methodology for resilience assessment under multiple hazards, emphasizing its real-world effectiveness. The findings highlight the efficacy of the proposed methodology and its potential to assist asset managers, owners, and decision-makers in informed resilience planning and optimization strategies. This comprehensive approach fills critical gaps in existing methodologies, offering a robust framework for assessing CI resilience in a dynamic and systematic nature.fals
Curating Life in Vacant Spaces: Community Action Research and Reversing the Process of Academic Knowledge-Making
Get PDFFor scholars in academic institutions, the process of research usually begins with a question often gleaned from academic literature, progresses through some methods and results, then ends in writing and dissemination of the findings. ‘Impact’ is identified by trying to see if anyone takes up the research and uses it to inform policy or action outside of academia – with contemporary impact databases measuring this by whether it has been cited in policy documents. But this way of understanding impact is fundamentally at odds with researching community-led activism, where impact is already happening, and researchers engage with communities to document and evaluate the impact in ways that support the work. For activists out in the community, research and learning are happening all the time and have impact without anyone writing it up at all. This paper reflects on a research project in the city of Ōtautahi Christchurch in Aotearoa New Zealand, where researchers and community activists began with ‘impact’ and ‘dissemination’. From there, we developed frameworks and methods, developed evidence, then ended with asking wider theoretical questions relevant to academic literature. Effectively, we reversed the order that research projects usually follow. In order to recognise this ‘reversed’ order, our paper utilises a reversed structure, using the concept of thinking infrastructures to understand what academic research adds to the knowledges already produced in community impact.fals
'But we're just the same humans as you' : refugees negotiating exclusions, belonging and language in Sweden and New Zealand : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Applied Linguistics at Massey University, Manawatū, New Zealand
Get PDFListed in 2025 Dean's List of Exceptional ThesesRefugee settlement is a complex process requiring the navigation of new linguistic and social spaces and the renegotiation of belonging and identity. The process can also be complicated by the contested nature of national belonging and the politicisation of social cohesion, as well as by forms of everyday exclusion.
Drawing on a Bakhtinian dialogical framework, this study used qualitative data from interviews with language teachers, settlement support workers and refugee-background residents in New Zealand and Sweden to investigate dimensions of belonging, social cohesion, and language in relation to refugee settlement. The study sought to discover how belonging and social cohesion are perceived and experienced by refugee-background residents in these contexts, how they are promoted by the two settlement nations, and how they are operationalised in political and public discourse to enforce boundaries and construct national and refugee identities. Of particular interest was the intersection of public discourse and lived experience, and the tensions and contestations that may arise in these spaces. Language learning and use were seen as crucial aspects of belonging and social cohesion and were investigated both in terms of linguistic inequalities in the settlement location and in terms of the unique language learning journeys of adult learners.
The findings suggest that there are significant gaps in the understanding of refugee experiences among policy makers and that discursive representations of refugees, particularly in terms of social cohesion and belonging, often impact negatively on the settlement process. The politicisation of belonging and the appropriation of social cohesion discourses as tools for differentiation, and potentially exclusion, can have negative impacts on individuals’ rights and settlement prospects while reductive representations of refugees lead to unrealistic expectations in terms of language acquisition and labour market participation and to restrictive policies that hinder the settlement process.
The thesis concludes by arguing that in order to strengthen social cohesion and belonging, it is imperative that refugees are included as dialogical partners, practically and ideologically. It identifies theoretical, methodological, and practical implications of the research and raises further questions in relation to gender, language acquisition, incentivisation and dialogical practice in the context of refugee settlement
Make African grasslands climate-change resilient
Get PDFClimate change has negatively impacted grassland productivity in Africa. Climate-smart technologies such as forage grass, legume, and herb mixtures could enhance grassland productivity and resilience, offering a sustainable solution for African pasture-based livestock systems.fals
Reassessing the sustainability promise of cultured meat: a critical review with new data perspectives
Get PDFThere are currently over 170 companies in the field of cultured meat (CM) which have attracted over US$3 Billion in investments since 2019. The CM industry owes much of this success to the many claims around environmental benefits and alleviating animal welfare concerns, while being equally nutritious and as acceptable as conventional meat. This review aims to provide a much needed discussion on the latest research findings concerning the nutritional and environmental sustainability of CM and provide an evidence-based discussion around some of the challenges that the industry faces today. Recent developments in the field have revealed that some of the sustainability claims of the CM industry are overly ambitious and not supported by evidence. Environmental assessments have revealed that CM production is highly energy intensive and its environmental footprint can only be improved if renewable energy sources are used. In terms of nutritional quality of CM, there are many unknowns and gaps in the knowledge that require investigation.fals