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Compression and cryptology
Get PDFCurrently data compression and encryption are carried out as two separate activities. A simpler communication system would result if these two activities could be combined. The security properties of lossless data compression techniques are investigated. It is argued that compression is necessary for security but demonstrated that current compression techniques are not sufficient. Both coding techniques (arithmetic coding and Huffman coding) and modelling techniques (splaying, Ziv-Lempel, and prediction by partial matching—PPM) are examined. It is shown that all these systems have significant security flaws. Explicit attacks are given and descriptions of algorithms to automate the attacks are provided. Chosen plaintext attacks are given for Huffman coding, PPM, and splaying. Known plaintext attacks are given for arithmetic coding, splaying and Ziv-Lempel compressors. A ciphertext only attack is given for the Ziv-Lempel compressors. These results are used to highlight why better models of natural languages have important applications in cryptology. In particular, it is explained how a better model of a source leads naturally to increased resistance from dictionary and ciphertext only attacks.
Some of the attacks presented involve novel methods not previously reported in the literature. In particular, it is shown how a backtracking search can be used for known and chosen plaintext attacks against fixed to variable length binary encoders (Huffman coding and splaying). It is shown how a good model of the source (a PPM model) can be used in an automatic ciphertext only attack against simple substitution ciphers and Ziv-Lempel compressors. The attack against simple substitution ciphers is at least comparable to previously published automated approaches. In some cases analytical or asymptotic results concerning the complexity of the attacks are given. It appears that compression leads naturally to increased ciphertext only resistance, but current compressors contain no operations likely to thwart known or chosen plaintext attacks
František Jiránek and the Italian connection: A study of the influence of Antonio Vivaldi on the bassoon concertos of František Jiránek
Get PDFThe concertos of Antonio Vivaldi rapidly transformed not only Venetian and Italian music but influenced composers across the rest of Europe as well. The older generation of composers felt the need to integrate at least some of the features of the new and malleable Vivaldian ritornello model into their own works, and the younger generation simply fell completely under the inspiring composer's spell. Vivaldi's influence relied on his reputation as a virtuoso performer, Venice's cultural standing and, in particular, the rapid dissemination of his publications throughout Europe.
Vivaldi scholar Michael Talbot and musicologist Václav Kapsa have accrued a large amount of research on Vivaldi and Jiránek's lives, works and influence but have not spent a lot of time on the composer's bassoon concertos specifically. Inspired by their work, I have been able to create a clear image of both composers' surroundings, influences, and possible motivations to extrapolate my theories regarding the Jiránek bassoon concertos and his relationship with his teacher Vivaldi.
This thesis is presented in six chapters, alongside performance editions of Jiránek's four extant bassoon concertos (including the two incomplete works) and a recording of a performance of the two complete concertos (KapM Jiranek 18 in F major and KapM Jiranek 21 in G minor), and two by Vivaldi (RV 496, and RV 501).
Chapter 1 sites the study in the well-traversed area of Vivaldi scholarship, surveys the literature and introduces the purpose and processes of the thesis. Chapter 2 provides a detailed overview of the musical life of Bohemian composers of the early eighteenth century, the esteemed musical court of Count von Morzin, and Vivaldi's connection with it. Chapter 3 introduces František Jiránek and highlights his time as a student of Vivaldi. Chapter 4 considers the dominant galant aesthetic of the Bohemian courts and provides a discussion of rhetorical elements. Chapter 5 is a descriptive analysis, after John White, of the first movements of four bassoon concertos, each by Vivaldi and Jiránek. Chapter 6 presents findings and conclusions.
During the 1720s, Vivaldi moved away from the earlier 'classic' concerto form of the 1710s creating a more flexible and inventive model. Unlike many of Vivaldi's followers who were influenced by the composer's earlier concertos, it is clear by the information gathered in this research that Jiránek followed his master's lead and composed in a similarly flexible way. The specific formal and motivic characteristics that have been identified here show that Jiránek used a vast array of these Vivaldian traits (such as compositional frameworks, orchestration, and phrasing) effortlessly, which he combined with an impressive working knowledge of the instruments he was writing for, comparably to his teacher, in a very idiomatic way
Desirable attributes for medical graduates: The health aspirations and needs of Maaori living in Te Rohe Pootae
Get PDFHealth disparities for Maaori, the tangata whenua of Aotearoa New Zealand, are prevalent when compared to the health of European New Zealanders, and even more so in remote and rural communities where access to health-care services is limited. Moreover, Maaori are underrepresented in the medical workforce in which there is a serious and escalating shortage of doctors and nurses.
In the context of the University of Waikato’s proposal to establish a Graduate Entry Medical School, Te Huataki Waiora School of Health has identified the need for a collaborative approach to ‘growing’ a fit-for-purpose health workforce with the skills and commitment to care for and work with Maaori (and Pacific peoples) living in remote and rural communities. This study thus explores the health perspectives, needs, and aspirations of Maaori living in and around the King Country rural service towns of Te Kuiti and OOtorohanga. Conducted by a Ngaati Maniapoto tribal member, the location for the study is known by Maaori as Te Rohe Pootae - the lands of Rereahu/Maniapoto, to which the Waikato people sort refuge after the invasion and confiscation of their lands in the 1860s. The perspectives, needs, and aspirations of Pacific peoples living in these communities have been explored in a ‘sister’ Masters study conducted by Janina Galewski.
The present exploratory study incorporates a co-design research process underpinned by an Indigenous health framework with Kaupapa Maaori values. Kanohi ki te kanohi (face to face) semi-structured interviews were conducted with 30 community members, 11 males and 19 females aged 18 years and over. The data analysis included a combination of values, verses and holistic, and provisional coding methods (focused, thematic, descriptive) (Saldana, 2021).
The findings reveal that these community members view themselves as either rural or remote based on distance, access to services, and geographic isolation, but not population numbers. In terms of services, they want a mobile health workforce including clinics, carers, doctors, nurses; mental health workers who are equipped with the resources and time needed to reach and serve their patients; and better access to dialysis and related services. The research also identifies three healthcare strategies. When ill or injured, one-third of the group go directly to their GP; one-third try other things before seeking medical assistance, including going home to their parents and/or to their marae for comfort and advice, ‘going bush’ to (re)connect with nature, and forms of pure (cleansing rituals); and although the remaining third are registered with medical centres they do everything they can to avoid seeing a doctor at all. Instead, they rely on rongoaa and other ‘complementary and alternative’ treatments such as physiotherapists, chiropractors, osteopaths, and other healers.
Adopting and adapting a table created by Woolley et al. (2013), the findings also revealed three sets of desirable attributes for medical graduates (and other healthcare professionals): Skill-based attributes include quality care and communication skills, knowledge-based attributes include medical knowledge and culturally appropriate knowledge, while attitude-based attributes include personality and community engagement. This framework can be used to inform a medical education curriculum, with a specific emphasis on the health needs and aspirations of Maaori living in rural and remote communities
Eke panuku, eke tangaroa! How Black Ferns 7s athletes navigate Instagram and inspire the next generation in Aotearoa
Get PDFThis thesis considers the role of Instagram in the lives of players on the New Zealand Black Ferns 7s rugby team, and audience engagement with players’ social media accounts. Using a mana wāhine methodology, this study explores how Black Ferns 7s players utilize and navigate Instagram, through mixed-methods enquiry, including a social media analysis of 8 players’ accounts, interviews with 3 Black Ferns 7s players, and talanoa sessions with members of the women’s rugby community in the Bay of Plenty, supplemented by input from Black Ferns players and fans via direct messages on Instagram. The quantitative social media analysis identified 4 key themes in players’ Instagram posts: achievement, team & rugby, life outside rugby, and culture & vulnerability. The analysis reveals that players post the most regarding their “team & rugby”, generating an “athlete first” self- representation. It finds a statistically significant difference in the thematic content of Instagram posts based on squad seniority and the number of followers a player has. Followers were found to engage most with posts regarding “achievement”, and the least with posts regarding “culture and vulnerability”.
The interviews elaborate upon these quantitative differences by highlighting why athletes specifically use Instagram, insights into Black Ferns aspirational team dynamics, and the importance of a player’s life outside of rugby. The thematic analysis also reveals the digital economic and collective labour involved in producing social media content as a member of this team, and what it means to be culturally “authentic” online in Aotearoa. It reveals the unique elements generated by the team-sport context of this study, including intra-team differences in social media usage. Furthermore, hauora, Indigenous role modeling, and Tall Poppy Syndrome emerge as factors particularly unique to the cultural context within which this study takes place. The discussions culminate in the establishment of a layered understanding of the external, internal, and individual factors which shape Instagram posting habits, and the features which most significantly impact why audiences follow the curated displays Black Ferns 7s athletes provide online.
This project contributes to international literature on sportswomen’s use of social media, demonstrating the powerful ways that players support one another in what, when, and how they post, and the importance of cultural identity in Māori and Pasifika players’ social media engagement. It further reveals the importance of team culture in shaping individual players’ social media and audience engagement. This thesis also highlights the significance of sporting and cultural histories and intersectional identities in digital self-representation and fan engagement with sportswomen’s social media usage
Insects as mini-livestock: New Zealand’s public attitudes toward consuming insects
Get PDFInsects are a relatively sustainable food source with a high proteincontent, and an alternative food option for the growing globalpopulation. However, while entomophagy (eating insects) is agrowing food trend on the global stage, very few studies focuson New Zealanders’perceptions of it. This research aims to betterunderstand the New Zealand publics’attitudes to theconsumption of insects, by exploring willingness to eat insects,the preferred processing methods for consumption, and barriersto adopting insects into participants’diets. An online survey wasconducted via SurveyMonkey in 2019 recruiting via social mediaplatforms. Within the sample (n= 1322), male participants weremore likely to express a willingness to consume insects, as wereyounger participants (<56 years) and those who consume meat.Over sixty percent of participants responded that they would eatinsects, and possibly regularly, if in an acceptable form such as acapsule for improved health. Participants were aware of theenvironmental benefits of eating insects over other proteinsources but less aware or certain of the potential health benefits.New Zealand may be a candidate for well-marketed productscontaining insects, most likely in the form of a powder to add toexisting foods or health products
Keeper of the light
Get PDFKeeper of the Light is an historical novel based on the true story of Mary Jane Hebden, a country gentleman’s daughter, who in 1839 at the age of 22 sails to New Zealand on the emigrant ship Duke of Roxburgh. There she is reunited with her fiancé George Bennett, a seedsman, who left on the Cuba two months earlier.
It is a time of change in Britain. A youthful Queen Victoria has just come to the throne, and the combined works of Jane Austen have recently been published under her own name for the first time. The poor are suffering terrible financial hardship from loss of work caused by the Industrial Revolution, and the rising cost of food due to the Corn Laws. The New Zealand Land Company and the British Government have their eyes on the distant prize of New Zealand, and it is a race to see who will get there first.
Against this background, a young English woman sets out on a 13,000 mile voyage halfway around the world in order to wed the man she loves. A journey that sees her running away from her home in Yorkshire, and ends with her taking on a man’s job in New Zealand in order to support her family.
In Britannia, the fledging colony of the New Zealand Land Company, the ordinary lives of Mary and George – marriage, birth, work and death – are interspersed with extraordinary events like earthquakes, fire and floods. News to and from ‘home’ must travel by ship, and takes three to six months to arrive, if it arrives at all.
A unforeseen change in circumstances forces Mary to take on a job as keeper of the temporary lighthouse at Pencarrow, the isolated headland at the entrance to Wellington harbour. She and her family live in a two-room cottage that is ‘neither wind- nor water-proof’ with a smoky lantern in the window that must be tended all night. Access is by boat, and the nearest town an eight-mile walk away along a rocky beach.
The cottage is replaced with New Zealand’s first permanent lighthouse four years later, and Mrs Bennett becomes Head Keeper, the first – and only – female lighthouse keeper in New Zealand’s history. She must maintain her position in the face of opposition from the Assistant keeper, William Lyall, who complains to the authorities that he can’t manage with only a woman’s help.
In all, Mary Jane Bennett held the position of Keeper of the Light at Pencarrow Head for ten years. Her part in New Zealand’s history deserves to be celebrated, and yet like many historical achievements by women, it remains little known, even in the country of her birth and in her adopted home. This novel sets out to tell her story in her own words, in a fictionalised re-telling of actual events
Excerpt from Pet
No full textCatherine Chidgey has once again won the prestigious Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize, this time for her brilliant "classic in the making" novel The Axeman's Carnival. Now her thrilling new psychodrama looks set to grab more awards and is launching in the UK as Book of the Month. This excerpt from Pet gives you a taste of an author who is smoking hot right now
Filamentous algae as a nutrient scrubber for agricultural drainage treatment
Get PDFFilamentous algae nutrient scrubbers (FANS) have potential as a novel on-farm treatment system to remove and recover diffuse nutrients from agricultural drainage water. FANS use attached filamentous algae that grow and assimilate nutrients from the water which are removed when algal biomass is harvested for beneficial use (e.g. biofertilizer, animal feed supplement). This thesis investigated the attachment abilities, growth rates, biomass productivity and nutrient removal rates of four locally isolated filamentous algae species with the potential for use on FANS to bioremediate nutrients in agricultural drainage water.
To date, a standardised method to assess the productivity and nutrient removal of attached filamentous algae and identify target species for FANS cultivation has not been developed. Therefore, a reproducible bioassay was developed to rapidly assess the ability of four filamentous algae species to attach and grow, remove nutrients, and produce harvestable algal biomass using microscale FANS (μFANS) under controlled indoor conditions. This bioassay included the development of a method for rapid seeding by ‘hooking” algal filaments onto the FANS liner to provide initial physical attachment. Within 14 days, a “lawn” of the seeded algae had established and the “hooked” biomass had attached biologically onto the FANS liner. Oedogonium sp. Was identified as the best performing species overall, with the strongest holdfast attachment, high biomass productivity and high nutrient removal rates.
As the growth and bioremediation performance of filamentous algae can vary with seasonal changes in environmental conditions, the performance of four filamentous algae species was assessed under summer and winter ambient outdoor conditions on mesocosm-scale FANS. Oedogonium sp. Had the highest biomass productivity and nitrate removal rates under both seasons, confirming it as the best performing species. In addition, Oedogonium sp. FANS had the lowest contamination in percentage cover of non-target species compared to the other three species under both summer and winter conditions. These results demonstrate that Oedogonium sp. Has a higher tolerance than the other three species to summer and winter ambient temperature and light variation, enabling Oedogonium sp. To maintain dominance on the floway for a longer period. For these reasons, Oedogonium sp. Was identified as a promising target for year-round cultivation on FANS.
FANS operating parameters can strongly influence algal biomass productivity and nutrient removal. Therefore, the effects of the influent flow rate, harvesting frequency and initial standing crop on unialgal Oedogonium sp. FANS biomass productivity and nutrient removal performance were assessed under controlled environmental conditions to remove any variability in performance due to variations in ambient conditions. Results suggested that an initial standing crop of 70-80 g DW m-2, harvesting frequency of four days and influent flow rate of 1 L min-1 (16.7 L min-1 .m width) were optimal for Oedogonium sp. Cultivated on FANS to maximize biomass productivity and nutrient removal under controlled laboratory conditions. These results contribute to understanding the impacts of operating parameters on optimizing unialgal Oedogonium sp. FANS biomass production and nutrient removal performance.
Despite their potential influence on performance, the effects of FANS seeding methods and species composition have received little attention. Therefore, the effects of seeding method (controlled seeding vs. natural establishment) and seeded species composition (single species vs. mixed species algal assemblages) were investigated in FANS treating agricultural drainage on a dairy farm over seven months. FANS seeded using controlled seeding established biomass five times faster (10 days) than FANS left to establish naturally (7 weeks). Overall, the seeding method and species composition of algae seeded on FANS did not significantly affect biomass productivity and nutrient removal performance. However, FANS seeded with a single species (Oedogonium sp.) had a lower contamination rate in terms of percentage coverage of non-target species than FANS seeded with a mixed species assemblage. These results demonstrate that controlled seeding and cultivation of a single target filamentous algae species can help to maintain a higher abundance of a target species on FANS over a longer period of time, enabling the recovery of high-quality biomass with low variation in algae species composition.
This thesis has demonstrated that FANS can be successfully used to treat nutrients in agricultural drainage water, and therefore could be implemented as a novel tool to assist in mitigating diffuse pollution in New Zealand. The findings can be used to provide farmers and land managers with a clearer understanding of how FANS can be used to remove nutrients from agricultural drainage water to meet water quality objectives while minimizing the impacts on farming activities
Trans and non-binary people’s experiences of cancer care in Aotearoa/New Zealand
Get PDFCancer is a severe and life-threatening disease affecting many people and their loved ones. Much is still unknown about cancer as a disease; however, it is known that the care that patients receive can play a vital role in producing better illness outcomes and improving quality of life during treatment. Understanding people’s experiences of cancer care is important for creating better care protocols, understanding barriers to care access, and ensuring patients receive care that meets their needs. This thesis explores the gap in knowledge surrounding trans and non-binary (TNB) people’s experiences of cancer care in Aotearoa/New Zealand. There is limited cancer research internationally regarding TNB communities and cancer, and little-to-no known research has been published specific to Aotearoa/New Zealand. The research question of this study was, what are the cancer care experiences of TNB people in Aotearoa/New Zealand? To understand this question, I undertook an interpretive qualitative study theoretically informed by community psychology. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with three participants who identified as trans or non-binary and had received treatment in Aotearoa/New Zealand within the last ten years. A narrative case study approach was utilised, in order for the complexity and diversity of each participant’s experiences to be recognised.
It was found that TNB people experience barriers in accessing cancer care and receiving quality cancer care. These barriers are related to wider structural issues resulting from cisgenderism that are reflected within cancer care. Cisgenderism acts to constrain how TNB patients define their own narrative of illness and interrupts the ability to move forward through cancer in ways that are personally meaningful. The study also found that TNB people are not passive in the face of constraint, as the participants each found ways to maintain a sense of agency within their experience of cancer care. There was significant diversity within the participants’ experiences, which was an important finding in-itself. This diversity particularly demonstrated the benefit of a methodological approach that could account for complexity and intersectionality, when seeking to understand TNB people’s experiences of cancer care. Overall, this thesis provides new insight into an underexplored topic and has important implications for TNB cancer patients in Aotearoa/New Zealand
Access to Sexual Rights for all People with Disabilities: The Need to See and Include the Experiences of People with Intellectual Disability
Get PDFThe Target Article by Benoit et al. (2022) discusses disability as an umbrella term for impairments, activity limitations, and participation restrictions, with an evolving understanding promoted by the World Health Organization and the United Nations. However, the application of this understanding, particularly for people with intellectual disabilities, may not adequately address their unique experiences of sexuality. People with intellectual disabilities face various barriers to sexual rights, including restrictive policies, practices, and negative social attitudes. The review by Benoit et al. (2022) lacks differentiation in addressing these specific challenges. Narrative research with people with intellectual disabilities highlights their agency, challenges restrictive practices, and emphasizes the importance of inclusive research and self-advocacy. The UNCRPD falls short in addressing the sexuality rights of people with intellectual disabilities, and there is a need for alliances between disability rights and sex worker advocacy to ensure inclusive sexual assistance services. The holistic approach should consider physical support, education, cultural change, and a differentiated understanding of sexual rights for people with intellectual disabilities. The Commentary raises questions about the appropriateness of a broad approach when addressing the barriers to sexual rights and emphasizes the need to recognize the unique experiences of people with intellectual disabilities in shaping laws, policies, and practices related to their sexual citizenship