Advance - Summer 2012

Unitec Research Magazine Summer 2011/2012

A six-legged perspective Page 20 We meet Unitec’s new professor

Page 8

Page 10

All heart

After the disaster

The truth about heart disease

Lessons from Christchurch

editorial editor Simon Peel writer Karen Burge art direction Nadja Rausch design Aaron Bold photography Grant Southam printing Norcross Group of Companies published by Unitec Institute of Technology ISSN 1176-7391 phone 0800 10 95 10 web www.unitec.ac.nz postal address Private Bag 92025, Victoria Street West, Auckland 1142, New Zealand

An artist impression of the new Te To footbridge.

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Research with impact At Unitec we strive to give life to an idea that is central to our research strategy; that of impact. That is to say we give priority to research that makes a difference, to our stakeholders, to our students, and to the community. There are several excellent examples in this issue of Advance.

Last month I attended the opening of the Auckland Museum’s latest exhibition You Are Here: Mapping Auckland. A central feature of the exhibition is a purpose-built interactive map designed and built by a group of Unitec students from different discipline areas including design, photography and computing. The interactive map allows visitors to overlay their stories onto a virtual map of the Auckland region. It is an example of the sort of multidisciplinary collaborative project that blends student learning, research, and community engagement.

Another quite literally high-profile project is the design of the motorway footbridge linking St Mary’s Bay and Ponsonby to Westhaven and the Wynyard Quarter area (see left). Thanks to Unitec’s Lisa Reihana this will not be just a functional glass and steel box, but rather a piece of art that projects the history of the area in which it sits. Lisa’s research into the pre-European history of Auckland’s waterfront has enabled her to incorporate traditionallyinspired designs with modern construction materials to help produce a bridge that Aucklanders will be proud of.

The range and diversity of Unitec research takes many people by surprise. You may be as interested as I was to read about Mark Farnworth’s research into the question of whether fish feel pain,

or rather, into the question of whether people believe that they do. This is intriguing as many of us like to catch fish but do not really like to think too much about the full range of implications of this activity. Hopefully Mark’s research will encourage people to dispatch fish in a humane fashion should they be successful in catching them.

Returning to the concept of research that has impact, how about a research project that aims to save the lives of kiwi by discouraging dogs from eating them? Arnja Dale’s research evaluates the effectiveness of a Department of Conservation training programme that encourages dogs operating in areas with kiwi present to avoid them. This research may lead to improvements in these programmes and reduced predation from dogs.

Also in this issue we profile research ranging from heart research, helping students to uncover strengths and develop increased confidence, the use of portaloos following the Christchurch earthquakes, art in early childhood education, natural methods of pest management, and stormwater management. I hope that you enjoy this issue of Advance and welcome any feedback or comments you may have.

Contact: Dr Simon Peel Associate Professor Dean, Research Email: speel@unitec.ac.nz

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Golden gateway bridge The new motorway footbridge at the entrance to Auckland City ticks all the boxes when it comes to form and function, but it will also be an exciting new architectural art piece on the urban landscape.

A new footbridge across Auckland’s motorway will be a shimmering gateway to Auckland City, clad in acrylic tukutuku-inspired panels designed by Unitec’s Tohunga a Toi Lisa Reihana. As one of the structures associated with the $340M Victoria Park Tunnel project, the 102m long Te To Footbridge will be clad in coloured transparent acrylic, referencing tukutuku panels and based on patterns generated from video footage taken by Lisa of a sunrise over water.

“It’s going to look beautiful when it is finished,” says Lisa.

“And there will be different opportunities to view it, whether you whiz past it on the motorway or walk through it or see it in the distance. I really liked the idea of working on a really big bridge and to be part of a large civic project. Collaborating with leading companies like Warren and Mahony, Beca and Boffa Miskell has also been a great opportunity.”

The footbridge, which runs from the bottom of the Jacob’s Ladder staircase in St Mary’s Bay across the Northern motorway to Westhaven Marina, will provide a vibrant pedestrian link to the waterfront. While designed primarily to give walkers and joggers easy access from St Mary’s Bay into the city via the new Wynyard Quarter and the Viaduct, there will also be provision for cyclists.

For Lisa, involvement in the project has also allowed her to highlight the pre-European uses of the land. On the St Mary’s Bay side of the footbridge is the former headland and pa site of Te To — which after reclamation now sits back from the shoreline — while Victoria Park was the former sea shore. As well as patterning for the bridge, Kupenga Design has worked on designs for use on the egress tunnel exit buildings in Victoria Park and a permanent lightbox, which will feature a photograph of the sea as a reminder of what the area would have looked like in pre-Eurpoean times.

Designed by architects Warren and Mahoney, the bridge has intricate angled features designed to give the structure movement and interest, reminiscent of a draped fishing net. The cladding is a transparent acrylic material, 20mm thick, with a gold-coloured frit pattern designed and developed by Lisa and fellow artist Henrietta Nicholas, who work together as Kupenga Design. Once installed, the patterned panels will give the bridge a golden glow day and night, with lighting at night adding to the feature.

“These are Māori commissions and as iwi we want to make sure that the work is appropriate. The Ngati Whatua Trust Board has worked with Auckland City Council (now part of Auckland Council) to look at all the upcoming projects for opportunities to signal historical sites and this is one of them. The Māori Advisory Group

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Lisa stands under the partially-constructed footbridge which will feature patterned acrylic panels inspired by sunrise on the water.

knows that Tamaki Makaurau isthmus is steeped in history and wanted to signal to the general population, tourists and visitors the former histories of the area.”

researcher, with works in the collections of Te Papa Tongarewa and the Auckland Art Gallery, and is regularly invited to present and exhibit at overseas events.

Lisa says a lot of background research went into the project, starting with the Heritage Overview document compiled by then heritage and resource manager for Ngati Whatua o Orakei, Ngarimu Blair, followed by a four-hour walk led by Pita Turei from Ngati Whatua, sharing the ancient names, distinct local stories, waka histories and tribal allegiances. “We spent time researching and understanding the physical, emotional and spiritual dimensions of each place, which will be seen by visitors as ancient place names, native planting and surface design elements. There are production realities in casting concrete, and it was interesting developing patterns for an extremely long wall with height differences. The image chosen by Warren and Mahoney for the acrylic patterns was instantaneous, as executive director John Coop fell in love with the sunrise reference and look and we then worked on colour, scale and placement of the image.”

“I’m better known as an artist and photographer but multi-media filmmaking is my passion. To fundraise and produce high-end experimental moving image work is difficult in New Zealand, so I have a wide ranger of projects that I work on.

At Unitec Lisa holds the position of Tohunga a Toi, which is an academic advisory role encouraging a strong Māori and Pacific dimension in teaching and learning in Unitec’s creative fields.

She is also an internationally-renowned artist and leading

“My role here at Unitec is to assist Māori and Pacific students but all other students as well. The Māori and Pacific influence gives us a point of difference in the international tertiary field and I see that when I am overseas. When people come here from other countries, what they want to see in our gallery and museum collections is what is unique to Aotearoa and it is vital that we understand and treasure that.”

Contact: Lisa Reihana Senior Lecturer / Tohunga a Toi Faculty of Creative Industries and Business Department of Design and Visual Arts Email: lreihana@unitec.ac.nz

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» Natural Sciences

Shock tactics A training programme for dogs that literally shocks them out of any interest in wild kiwi is shown to have continued effects, even up to a year after the initial training.

A Department of Conservation (DOC) training programme designed to stop dogs attacking kiwi in the wild has been running for 14 years and new research by Unitec Natural Sciences lecturer Arnja Dale shows that dogs remember the training for at least a year.

Kiwi populations have been in decline since the arrival of humans to New Zealand, with all kiwi species at risk and some precariously close to extinction. While habitat destruction plays a role in this, the biggest threats are introduced predators such as ferrets, possums, stoats, cats and dogs. Banning dogs from areas where kiwi live would seem a simple solution but is impractical in reality as kiwi live on both public and private land. In addition, hunting dogs play an essential role in reducing introduced predators such as feral pigs, deer and goats, often in remote areas, which is considered an essential method of pest control by DOC.

Dogs and kiwi

In an effort to balance the use of hunting dogs in conservation areas with a decreased risk to kiwi, DOC started the Kiwi Aversion Training (KAT) programme, with funding from the Bank of New Zealand Recovery Trust. While KAT is not mandatory for all dogs, it is encouraged for dogs that live in kiwi habitat and is needed for a hunting permit on DOC land where kiwi live. In addition to this, some forestry company and private-land owners have made it a requirement for hunting in kiwi territory that they own. Arnja says there is also a strong community uptake in some areas and support for the importance of this training programme, part of which involves educating owners on the dangers dogs pose to kiwi.

During a KAT training session a dog is fitted with an electric shock collar and walked along a bush track where kiwi-related props, such as stuffed kiwi, frozen kiwi, and kiwi feathers, are placed. Once the dog shows an interest in the props by stopping to sniff them, the trainer administers a short shock (of .5 to 1.5 seconds) via remote control. The intention is that the dog will associate the sight and/or odour of kiwi props with the shock and avoid any live kiwi they may encounter in the future. The dog is then walked back past the props for a second time and a second shock administered if they show continued interest in the props. Arnja says that the training is based

on operant conditioning, in that a dog’s behaviour is punished, making the behaviour less likely to occur again In the past 14 years, thousands of dogs have been put through the programme in areas including Coromandel, the Waikato, East Coast and Hawkes Bay. But beyond anecdotal evidence from dog owners that the training has a strong deterrent effect in the wild, there have been few studies on the effectiveness.

“There is a lot of time, money and effort invested in KAT by DOC and a lot of goodwill and support from the local communities but the usefulness of the programme is relatively controversial because there has been no data to show if it is actually working to stop or reduce the number of dogs killing kiwi,” says Arnja. The aim of the research she undertook with her research assistant Shivaun Statham was to assess whether dogs formed a learnt aversion to the kiwi props during the KAT training, and if they retained that aversion after one month and one year. They were also interested to see if the aversion was site specific or applied regardless of where the dog came across the KAT props.

Retaining the training

To do this they selected 120 pig and goat-hunting dogs and divided them into three groups; dogs undergoing their first training; a selection of those dogs returning after a month; and a group of dogs returning one year after their initial training.

Arnja says that all dogs showed avoidance responses to the kiwi props during the initial training and also when exposed to those props one month after training. “In some cases these avoidance behaviours were so strong that it was difficult to get the dogs in close enough proximity to the kiwi bait to film them,” says Arnja. There was also no significant difference in the dogs’ responses when used at familiar and new sites, and as the dogs returning after one month did not have the electronic collar attached, the avoidance behaviour was also independent of this device.

One year after their initial KAT training, 87 per cent of dogs showed aversion to the KAT props and only seven of the 55 dogs required a further shock when they showed interest in the kiwi baits and props.

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A dog is fitted with an electronic collar in preparation for kiwi aversion training.

Below: Arnja Dale with one of the dogs being put through the KAT course.

“This research indicates that KAT is effective in producing aversion toward the KAT props that lasts one year post training,” says Arnja.

“What we would like to do now is to see if aversion towards the KAT props equates to aversion towards live kiwi, that make sounds, smell differently and move — all of which potentially stimulate predatory behaviours in dogs.”

Arnja says further research is needed into how KAT-trained dogs react to live kiwi in the wild and how wild kiwi react to predators such as dogs (they are thought to freeze on the ground rather than flee). “There are many practical difficulties and ethical issues involved in using live kiwi in the Kiwi Aversion Training programme but as an alternative this area of research may be possible initially with species of less conservation value.”

Arnja says further research opportunities include looking at the breed, age and sex of the dogs involved in KAT training and the purpose for which they are kept. She says that it is possible that pet dogs are a greater risk to kiwi than working and hunting dogs, which are trained to avoid contact with animals other than those they are hunting or working with. There was also scope to test the dogs’ aversion to the KAT props beyond the one year mark. “Given how vulnerable and important all species of kiwi are, further research into the KAT programme would be really valuable.”

Contact: Arnja Dale Lecturer and Curriculum Leader Faculty of Social and Health Sciences Department of Natural Sciences Email: adale2@unitec.ac.nz

8 » Medical Imaging

The heart of the matter New international research led by Unitec’s Associate Dean of Research, Dr Gillian Whalley, gives doctors the ability to predict survival rates in patients with heart disease.

“How long have I got Doc?” It’s a question most patients ask when they are diagnosed with a terminal illness but historically that question has been easier to answer for those with cancer than heart disease. But ground-breaking international research by Unitec Associate Dean of Research Dr Gillian Whalley and Professor Robert Doughty from the University of Auckland, means patients can now be told their chances of being alive in five years, based on a study looking at ultrasound scans and the eventual outcomes of more than 7,000 heart patients worldwide.

“Following our study we can now say to a patient ‘well you’ve got this abnormality, but you’ve also got these other things wrong as well’, says Gillian. ‘And of the people who have all of those things combined, about 50 percent are likely to be alive at five years, whereas if you only had that one thing, you would have a 90 percent chance’.”

“Ultrasound is often used to diagnose structural abnormalities and I’ve used it for a long time to diagnose heart disease. But my research interest has recently has been more focussed on predicting survival, so I use ultrasound to try and determine who’s likely to suffer readmission or death, particularly in high risk heart failure patients.”

Gillian says that cancer patients can be given an indication of their life expectancy when they are diagnosed because specialists have experience of how different types of cancer affect the body. But this has not been the case for patients with heart problems, leading some patients to assume their condition may not be life threatening.

She says that determining which patients are most at risk will help doctors better treat and manage their patients and the patients to better plan their lives and make beneficial lifestyle changes.

Survival guide

“We try to stratify people in terms of risk.

And to do that you need to have long-term follow up over many years, because we’re talking about people’s pattern of survival over five to 10 years. But if you’re trying to do a risk stratification, the more factors you try to include, the more people you need in the study, so the studies get enormous and very expensive to do.” And she says that because of this, in the past researchers have tended to concentrate on one or two factors and haven’t been able to take into account the whole picture. “Lots of us had performed similar studies, but none of us had independently been able to add all the pieces together.”

But by combining data from 32 studies internationally, they created a database of around 7000 patients, far exceeding the previous largest study of 500 patients.

“Immediately you’ve got a lot more people and you also end up with a lot more deaths and readmissions. Of the 7000 patients on the database, 1200 had died and this determines how powerful the study is, because you have end points to work back from.

“Because of that we could take lots of different factors and actually come up with an overall model of how they all fitted together. And at the end we could say to patients what their likelihood of survival would be after five years with their combination of conditions. Many heart specialists haven’t traditionally had those conversations with heart patients, because they have not had enough data.” The study team were looking firstly for patients with abnormalities on an ultrasound scan, which could involve things like whether the pumping chamber is enlarged, if it’s not pumping effectively, if the heart muscle relaxation is impaired or if the muscle is enlarged through diabetes or high blood

pressure. The study was funded by grants from the University of Auckland and the National Heart Foundation of New Zealand, and by the American Society of Echocardiography.

“We can do an ultrasound scan and detect that the heart’s dilated or damaged in some way, then we look at what else we can add to that information.” She says that within the group of patients with dilated hearts, some have other features that make them much more at risk than the rest of the group.

“We’ve known for a long time that severe pump or relaxation dysfunction or severe enlargement of the heart were bad for you but what had not been shown before was that the impact of each might be additive. For example, if you had all three abnormalities, the chance of survival was really low, but any of them in isolation was not too bad.”

International success

The results of this study have been widely published and cited as important advances in the management of patients with heart disease. “Based on the success of that we then went on to do another study looking not just at ultrasound but at patients with heart failure.” The same research team in Auckland assembled collaborators from across the world and ended up with a data set of around 50,000 patients, with a much wider range of information. Because of the level of their health problems, the patients had results of ultrasound, measurement of pump function and blood tests to measure a range of things including haemoglobin and sodium.

They recently presented the findings in seven presentations to the European Society of Cardiology, which is a 30,000 participant congress, and the main results have just been published in the European Heart Journal.“

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Gillian Whalley

The buzz at the meeting was that we’ve done something quite special and collaboration has been vital to the whole thing. The data has already been collected by other researchers, but often they have finished with the data or have taken it as far as they can within the limits of the size of their studies. We’ve given them the chance to be a part of something bigger that will allow us all to do something quite creative and unique.

“It allows us to generate data that can be generalised because we have data from all around the world and all different ethnic groups and populations.”

Size matters

Gillian says that being able to generalise data collected from across the world is a big improvement on current systems, which often generalise data collected only from white middle-class populations in the United States or Europe. It was this phenomenon that led Gillian, with colleagues at the University of Auckland, Professor Robert Doughty and statistician Katrina Poppe, to their latest research project. And while it is another international data collaboration, this time they are looking to create an internationallyapplicable ‘normal’ range for ultrasound measurements of the heart, based on ethnicity, gender and height. The study

Ultrasound of a heart

has been funded with a grant of $75,000 from the New Zealand Heart Foundation.

Initial work done by Gillian here in New Zealand shows that heart size is related to body size, particularly lean body mass, which is basically the skeleton and muscles.

“It makes sense that the taller and bigger you are, the bigger your heart should be.

What we found here in New Zealand is that Māori and Pacific people have much higher body muscle mass for a given weight.

And in fact they do have larger hearts compared to Chinese and Indian populations in New Zealand, who have much less muscle mass and smaller hearts.”

The danger of using ‘normal’ data derived from a limited and ethnically-narrow population, is that heart disease is under diagnosed in smaller Asian people and over-diagnosed in Pacific people says Gillian.

“Over-diagnosing disease is concerning as people go through unnecessary tests but under-diagnosing disease is terrible, because you miss the opportunity to treat them.”

She likens the heart size project to recent moves to broaden the baby weight range in New Zealand. Previously the norms were taken from a Pakeha population, which did not take account of the larger Pacific babies or the smaller Asian ones, leading one group to be labelled obese and the other underweight.

When it comes to heart size, Gillian says there are small studies on the subject from a range of countries and they want to pull all of those together. And unlike their previous studies, this data is from healthy subjects who have no heart problems but have had their heart measurements taken as part of a study or control group. “Heart disease is being detected more and more in the developing world as lifestyles change and healthcare improves, so we need tools to detect disease in those populations, and right now we don’t have them.

“Our aim is to combine the data to create a normal range that can be applied across the world. We hope to develop a computer programme which would go on ultrasound machines that would plot where patients should be on the graph, based on gender, ethnicity and height. That would definitely provide a much more accurate picture than we have now.”

Contact: Dr Gillian Whalley Associate Professor Associate Dean of Research Faculty of Social and Health Sciences Email: gwhalley@unitec.ac.nz

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» Architecture

Caught short in Christchurch New Zealand can learn some important lessons from the aftermath of the Christchurch earthquakes, says Unitec Associate Professor of Architecture, Dr Regan Potangaroa.

After 15 years in humanitarian aid and post-disaster relief work, Unitec Associate Professor in Architecture Dr Regan Potangaroa was well placed to have an opinion when Christchurch was struck by two major earthquakes. The structural engineer has worked on numerous humanitarian aid projects around the world through the not-for-profit organisation Red R Australia, which in association with AUSAid, the Australian Government’s international aid programme, deploys expert personnel to various United Nations’ programmes in locations experiencing disaster or conflict. Over the years the projects have also become the basis of Regan’s research.

“We try to do things better each time and research helps us do that.”

So when the February earthquake hit Christchurch, Regan was quick to head to the city where he studied for both his masters’ and bachelor’s degrees. For reasons that still confound them, Regan and a number of other New Zealanders with international disaster relief experience, found themselves working outside the official response.

However, he soon became involved with the Māori relief effort being coordinated by NgaiTahu, and projects in the heavily-affected eastern suburbs, performing surveys on buildings and houses and helping formulate a survival plan for people facing a winter living in their garage or shed with no heating.

And despite the Civil Defence Emergency Management ban on social research that wasn’t operationally required, Regan and colleagues were able to undertake a spatially-based study on the allocation of portaloos, one of the post-quake hot potatoes. The study has now been written into a peer-reviewed paper with co-authors Dr Suzanne Wilkinson, Associate Professor in Construction from the

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University of Auckland, PhD student Mohammad Zare, and Dr Paul Steinfort of PSA Project Management, which will feature in the Journal of Australian Disaster Management and Trauma.

Assets of importance

After the quake the portaloos became ‘assets of importance’ and as such it was not possible for individuals or businesses to hire them independently as Civil Defence Emergency Management had control of where they were allocated. “Civil Defence had a website showing the distribution of portaloos but when we checked against what actually was there on two subsequent days in March, there were big gaps,” says Regan. “But even on the Civil Defence website there were big gaps which they should have picked up on. They were distributed in some ad-hoc pattern and I don’t blame them for that but they didn’t monitor what happened afterwards.”

While some streets had many portaloos, surrounding streets had none, while areas with working sewerage or toilets they could flush with collected water, had portaloos they didn’t need.

“The earlier impression from people in the Eastern Suburbs that there were inequalities in the distribution of portaloos does appear to be supported by both the field work and the Civil Defence Emergency Management mapping.”

Regan says priority was not given to places such as retirement villages, which could have avoided moving vulnerable residents if they had had portaloos. “There is a secondary death rate associated with moving the elderly from the homes they are familiar with and causing further trauma. You can truck in water but because there were no toilets, they had to shift. That’s the sort of research that we’re trying to get to — we need to pick out who these vulnerable people are and do certain things to best protect them.

“There’s nothing wrong with making portaloos assets of importance and nothing wrong with controlling them but where you actually take them to was one of the key things that may not be learnt for the future and that’s why we got in there and wrote the paper.”

From the Christchurch experience he says that in a large-scale disaster with wide-spread loss of waste water, it may not be feasible to rely on portaloos and chemical toilets, and the research paper advocates people with the outdoor space be given instructions on building long drops, or pit latrines as they are known overseas.

Regan says the lessons that can be learned from Christchurch are that the recovery effort needs to start from day one, even as Search and Rescue teams are in the midst of trying to save lives.

And should another big earthquake hit New Zealand, other cities are in just as vulnerable a position, particularly when it comes to waste water services. Unlike pressurised water pipes, which can be checked using a hydrophone and which have a scale showing which pipe types are most at risk under different ground accelerations Regan says, it is hard to find the breaks in the largely gravity-fed waste water system.“Historically they wait until something comes bubbling out the ground and so after an earthquake there is no systematic way of predicting where the breaks will be or of checking the pipes, short of putting cameras down every one.”

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Regan Potaugaroa in Christchurch just after February’s earthquake.

Regan says the experiences in Christchurch also point to the benefits in having de-centralised waste water systems, where waste is treated in several parts of the city, meaning there is less disruption if one area is badly affected. He says that small waste water treatment plants may be the answer for any areas that have been red-stickered because they can’t easily reconnect to waste water services.

“We’ve developed, tested and adopted those methods and we know that there are patterns to look for. In the early part of the disaster, there are higher figures for depression, but then as you go along and as time progresses, a high anxiety takes over. We always look for that change because it’s a measure of resilience and when we see it we know it’s time to start building.”

An order to chaos

Who needs what?

Regan says that experience and research allows understanding of the patterns that occur and how disasters function “so we can actually do the job better”. It might seem strange to hear an engineer talk about assessing people’s emotional levels following disasters but he says the use of an assessment tool called DASS42 is a vital indicator of where to best focus relief efforts. “Typically when you go into a disaster, the most vulnerable people are the elderly, the sick, the female head of household, those with mental issues and young children but what the DASS does is it actually tells you specifically within those groups who is most in need of support.”

Regan says that after using the DASS42 in ten disasters, the research shows that women are more affected than men, in all cases except the Samoan tsunami, a phenomenon that remains unexplained.

“Disasters are not gender free unfortunately and that’s quite a shock for people. The impact on the people varies and it’s skewed on a gender basis against women.”

Even in the midst of chaos following a disaster, there are familiar patterns, says Regan. “People think that disasters are accidents therefore there’s no pattern to them, but there are certain things that happen in a certain order, even in the chaos. There is the emergency response phase, the recovery phase and the rebuild and reconstruction phase and certain things happen in each of those phases.”

Regan says that unlike psychologists they are not looking to assess people but to determine what the community most needs, whether it be an educational, health or shelter programme, and who the vulnerable people in the community are and what extra support they need. “Engineers and architects are a pretty practical bunch, so we want to get on and build things and put systems in place. But if we can figure who to build what for, then that greatly helps us.”

“One of the problems in Christchurch, is they have no social metric to measure if they’re doing good or bad. With all disasters you are looking at whether it was handled well or not and the scale we use for measuring that is quality of life. It may seem strange for an engineer to be doing this, but it’s all about measuring the level of wellbeing of people and working out what they need.”

Regan and his colleagues implemented the DASS42 after the Christchurch earthquake for a faith-based food programme and found that in that case women in the 40-49 age group were the most affected. “Because of the amount of people who were severely depressed, we knew that they should keep the food programme going.

By using this tool, the basis for doing something is a lot clearer than someone going out and saying ‘well, I think we should do this’. It can be tested so there’s rigour and methodology to the approach. Often in disaster-relief situations it’s quite seat-of-the-pants stuff, but through assessment and research we’re trying to move away from that.”

The DASS42, which stands for Depression Anxiety Stress Survey 42 questions, was designed by Professor Peter Lovibond from the University of New South Wales with the purpose of isolating and identifying current states of emotional disturbance. Regan says the tool is robust, easily translated and through use of a severity table, can characterise what the population is like from just one survey, unlike others tools which require before and after information.

Contact: Dr Regan Potangaroa Associate Professor Faculty of Creative Industries and Business Department of Architecture Email: rpotangaroa@unitec.ac.nz

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Helen Wrightson and Lee-Anne Turton watch Jesse painting at Unitec Early Learning Centre.

More than words Unitec Early Childhood lecturers Helen Wrightson and Lee-Anne Turton are researching how a strong arts programme can create confident and skilled early childhood teachers and engaged children.

Art plays a strong role in promoting young children’s creative thinking and learning but recent research by Unitec education lecturer and curriculum leader, Helen Wrightson, shows that a quality experience rests with the teachers. “The teacher really does have a significant role in the art process to extend children’s thinking, learning and creative abilities, and my research has focussed on teachers’ roles in children’s art and how they can support that.

“Evidence shows that children tell rich stories about themselves, their families, everyday experiences and knowledge of the world through their drawings,” says Helen. “Drawing is a visual language but this requires nurturing if it is to provide children another mode to communicate their stories and understandings of the people, places and things in their lives.”

Helen was an early childhood teacher for 23 years prior to becoming a lecturer and always valued the arts within the early childhood setting. “I did some art teaching papers and that inspired me to do more work with the children, recognising that some very valuable learning happens as a result of the art experiences that they have.

“I remain in awe of children’s artworks from infants’ earliest marks to the recognisable drawings of older children,” says Helen. “I have been fascinated by children’s potential with art medium and capabilities with expressing ideas of their world through artwork.”

With fellow lecturer Lee-Anne Turton, who was an early childhood teacher for 20 years and also teaches on the Bachelor of Education (Early Childhood Education) in visual arts, Helen is continuing her research focussing on the tools teachers need in order to deliver

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a quality early childhood art experience. “Visual arts programmes feature in all early childhood settings but the way children experience the programme will be highly influenced by their teachers,” says Helen. “Children deserve teachers who encourage them to explore, make discoveries, experiment, invent and enhance their creative thinking and learning.”

children’s thinking and challenged the children with new ideas.

Her findings were peer reviewed and published in the journal Early Education and she has also presented to conferences and professional groups on the subject.

Positive experiences

The pair is currently researching how the art programme undertaken by Bachelor of Education (Early Childhood Education) students at Unitec can help them use art confidently with children in their work experience centres, on practicum and once they graduate. They are currently looking at how a combination of practical art training and theoretical knowledge creates greater understanding of the arts and how that training then flows through to experiences in early childhood centres.

“There are universal developmental stages for children’s drawings and it is important that students recognise, understand, and celebrate those stages. This starts right from the very early marks that an infant or toddler makes on their journey to future success with drawing.”

Having the right balance of studio-based and theoretical classes should give students the experiences and confidence to engage positively with art, and Lee-Anne says the hands-on work will allow them to address some of their own art issues. “Many have had quite negative messages about art right through their education and have low self esteem about art, so quite often we will start the session with an art activity where students can engage at their own level of art knowledge.”

Helen adds that having hands-on experience also helps students understand the difficulties and challenges that children may experience and the pitfalls that can arise. “The one thing that we emphasise quite strongly for our students is that to teach art well, they don’t have to be an art specialist and that is borne out in my research. They need to be passionate about the arts and maybe consumers of the arts but they don’t have to be brilliant artists.”

The pair’s current research focus follows on from Helen’s recent masters’ study where she observed two experienced early childhood teachers engaging with children in a range of drawing experiences over a period of time, as well as conducting interviews and critiques of the centres’ philosophy statements. Helen says both teachers were proactive in supporting children’s thinking and learning through drawing and engaged in respectful dialogue with the children about their work that allowed them to understand

Using thematic data analysis she uncovered five main themes in the way the teachers worked, namely: supporting/scaffolding children to work at a higher level; encouraging children to share their understanding of the world through drawing; developing identity through encouraging the child’s sense of sense of self by praising and discussing the ‘artist’s’ work; promoting ‘talking and drawing’, as the combination of graphic (drawing) and narrative (talking) processes offer greater scope to understand the child’s thinking behind the work; and extending children’s understanding and confidence in using a wide range of skills and drawing tools.

Learning starts with art

In a recent study trip to Reggio Emilia, the Italian city renowned for its innovative child-centred approach to early childhood education, Helen says she was further inspired to start collaborative research with Lee-Anne into ways art can reflect the culture of both the country and the children’s family/whanau. And Lee-Anne, who is currently working towards her masters, is interested in how children can use art to tell their own cultural stories.

Both lecturers agree that there is real scope in the New Zealand early childhood curriculum, Te Whariki, to fully embrace the arts, whether that be drawing, painting, collage, clay work, construction, music, dance or drama, to teach a range of concepts and promote children’s thinking and learning. “In the early childhood centres we have the opportunity to explore the arts in far more detail than perhaps they have in primary school. We need to capture that and create teachers who take those opportunities as far as they can for the benefit of children.”

Lee-Anne, who is also a practicing assemblage artist and teaches children’s art classes, says art can be the gateway to learning that covers all areas, from science and numeracy to literacy, social studies and technology. “I believe that everything can be taught through art.”

Contact: Helen Wrightson Lecturer Faculty of Social and Health Sciences Department of Education Email: hwrightson@unitec.ac.nz

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Do fish feel pain?

Scientific research proves that fish do feel pain, but has that had any affect on the average Kiwi fisherman or woman? Senior lecturer in Animal Welfare, Mark Fanworth, researches public perceptions.

We’ve all heard the story about the one that got away. But what about the one that lay in the bottom of the boat flapping to death? The way we feel about the fish we catch is the subject of new research by Unitec Senior Lecturer in Animal Welfare, Mark Farnworth. In a study funded by the RNZSPCA, Mark is working with Rosie Muir, a recent Unitec graduate from the Bachelor of Applied Science (Animal Management and Welfare), and colleague Dr. Nigel Adams, to research whether New Zealanders believe fish feel pain and how that affects the way they interact with them.

Mark says that there are currently no clear welfare guidelines about the appropriate way to catch and kill wild fish in New Zealand, despite recent scientific evidence that fish do feel pain. The concept

is discussed by the University of Edinburgh’s Professor Victoria Braithwaite, who was incidentally one of Mark’s undergraduate lecturers, in a book called Do Fish Feel Pain?, which came out at the same time as Mark was looking at the New Zealand situation.

“The scientific evidence shows behavioural and hormonal changes across a range of fish species that are indicative of an animal that can feel pain. There is a lot of science out there that supports the notion that fish do feel pain and that they have a response to being injured that changes their behaviour and subsequent welfare in the long term. As far as we are aware their reactions are similar to mammals. This suggests that pain may not only affect them physically but may also have an emotional impact.”

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Taking the public pulse

Mark says that he was interested in researching whether New Zealanders — generally seen as a nation of fishermen and women — ­ were aware that fish feel pain and whether or not it mattered to them.

To assess this 700 surveys were distributed in all regions of New Zealand, of which 437 (62.4 per cent) were returned. The number of free post return surveys sent was proportional to the population of the area. Surveys were distributed at neutral venues, such as supermarkets, by acquaintances who had no other connection to the research or its outcomes.

While the majority of respondents thought fish did feel some pain and agreed there should be some form of clear regulation or guideline, the results varied significantly based on gender and whether the respondent fished. While 75 per cent of those who responded felt there should be welfare guidelines for fish caught on the rod while angling, this figure dropped to only 50 per cent among the group who fished, and men were less likely to agree than women.

Respondents were also given a chart from zero to 100 to mark how much pain a fish could feel. “The vast majority indicated that fish could feel pain in some way, but the lower your pain score, the more likely you were to be a fisherman or woman or someone who felt it was an acceptable pastime,” says Mark.

Most of those who felt that fish couldn’t feel pain at all were men who participated in fishing and they were also least likely to say that welfare regulations and legislation were required for fishing.

“So what you can see there is that people who are the least sympathetic to fish are also the ones most likely to say ‘I don’t need you to regulate what I am doing’. And that’s a disjointed way of looking at it,” says Mark. “Their observations and assumptions are potentially more about explaining away their own actions rather than based on any clear evidence.”

Fish vs mammals

Mark, who is an occasional fisherman, says he started thinking about the issue when he was asked to sign a petition against bull fighting.

“This involves chasing the bull around the arena and sticking spears in it until eventually it is exhausted and you kill it. Then I would read a newspaper story about someone who had a marlin on the hook for three hours and battled with it and eventually exhausted it and I found myself thinking ‘you can disagree with someone doing that to a mammal but it can be lauded as a great heroic act if you do that to a fish’.”

Mark says that he could treat a fish quite differently in the wild to what would be allowed in a laboratory situation. Non-commercial angling is not covered by commercial slaughter regulations and a fish is unlikely to be covered by the Animal Welfare Act until it is landed in the boat. Even then, it is improbable that someone would be prosecuted for not killing their catch immediately.

“There’s nothing to say that I can’t hold a fish on the line for five or six hours, it’s unlikely that I would be prosecuted for taking it out of the water and leaving it in the boat to suffocate, and there’s nothing to say that I have to kill it in a certain manner. This is a widespread

issue as catch and release angling, on a global scale, is estimated to involved 60 million fish annually.”

Mark says that in the 1700s and 1800s there was a widespread belief that animals could not feel pain but that was not generally accepted any longer. “In her book Do Fish Feel Pain? Victoria Braithwaite says that scientific evidence allows us to draw an acceptable line on when to protect animals. And science allows us to investigate that and move that line when we have new evidence.

“Fish have been in a grey area. People aren’t sure that they feel pain because fish are not like us. But we now have a body of evidence that says fish do feel pain and if that’s the case then it is not acceptable to leave a fish to flap around in the boat until it slowly dies. If you catch a fish and intend to keep it, then you need to kill it straight away. It’s about affording fish the respect that you should provide to all animals.

“This is not research to say that people shouldn’t go fishing or eat fish but is about building recognition and understanding.

Our actions have ramifications and if we understand them we can mitigate them. I hope this research will add the first known example of public attitudes towards pain in fish to an under-explored but burgeoning area of study. It will also provides the possibility to begin a no-doubt complex conversation about whether or not the welfare of wild fish needs to be protected and regulated for.”

Contact: Mark Farnworth Lecturer Faculty of Social and Health Sciences Department of Natural Sciences Email: mfarnworth@unitec.ac.nz

(L-R) Sue Gasquoine, Kseinija Napan (standing) and Kay Ingamells.

From strength to strength Helping students uncover their strengths leads to increased confidence and better career and life decisions says new research by Unitec Social Practice and Nursing staff.

New research by Unitec Social Practice and Nursing staff has used strengths-based work to help nursing and social practice students identify their top five strengths and apply those to career and life decisions. The pilot study by Department of Social Practice lecturer Kay Ingamells and senior lecturer Ksenija Napan, and Sue Gasquoine, lecturer and Head of Department for Nursing, involved a group of 79 second year students from the Bachelor of Social Practice and Bachelor of Nursing programmes.

The research was inspired by Kay’s personal experience in using Clifton StrengthsFinder, a well-proven, established, and standardised online tool by Gallup Management used for identifying and expanding individuals’ personal strengths. StrengthsFinder was first introduced in the book Now, Discover your Strengths (2001), and to date has been used by nearly five million people, translated into 22 languages and is used by companies and community and educational groups in 50 countries. Kay quickly saw the potential benefits to her students and worked on a pilot study proposal, which received funding from the Unitec Research Committee.

The cross-departmental collaboration with nursing further strengthened the study and allowed access to students studying to be nurses, social workers, counsellors, and community developers.

Kay said students often entered helping professions because they had experienced disadvantage in their lives and wanted to help others but often their strengths had not been acknowledged and nurtured. Strengths work was the opportunity not only to offer them something positive personally, but to ensure that they found the career where they would be the most content and successful.

“People often came into a helping profession like social work or nursing with very broad ideas of what they would like to achieve, but unclear about the specific areas of practice that they would contribute most to and find most satisfying. Identifying their strengths can help people to work out what areas of practice and what roles they would be best suited to and it may not necessarily be the area or role they initially thought they would work in.”

Kay gives child protection as an obvious example of how strengths can be mismatched to roles. Some people have strengths that lend

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themselves to the complex, conflictual and highly-sensitive area of child protection but those who don’t are likely to find work stressful and their ability to be successful compromised. Kay says that individuals can become demoralised when they work in a job that doesn’t match their strengths but by moving to a different area of the profession they could make better use of their skills and become happier and more successful.

discern their strengths and because they felt a general benefit from being involved in the project.

Study outline

For the pilot study, all students took part in an initial questionnaire about how they perceived their strengths, their aspirations and their confidence and wellbeing. From there participants were divided into three groups.

Group one participated only in pre and post-research questionnaires, group two participated in StrengthsQuest (the educational version of StrengthsFinder) and group three additionally participated in intensive coaching over a ten-day period provided by a Gallupaccredited coach, Debbie Marriot, who came from the UK, and ongoing sessions led by the research team under Debbie Marriot’s guidance. Debbie also provided training to staff Unitec wide.

A further six students from that group also took part in a Narrative of Strengths interview, which was developed by Kay and one of the founders of narrative therapy, David Epston, who is a lecturer in the Department of Social Practice and is widely regarded as one of the world’s leading therapists. The intention of the interviews was to give some context to the strengths the students had uncovered, so they could understand more of how they had been shaped and in learning this, unlock a greater connection to the strength that would allow it to be relevant and useful in their lives.

The three main results from the study were that students who undertook additional StrengthsQuest coaching became aware of their strengths and in some cases reclaimed strengths that had previously been perceived as weaknesses; felt increased confidence and ‘more at home’ with themselves; and reported improvements in study, shaping career choices and personal breakthroughs. “Improvements in confidence across various domains of life including study, was a dominant theme,” says Kay. “Students were able to go beyond where they would have previously stopped and use their strengths to take actions they might not otherwise have taken.”

Strengths, confidence and better choices

Students’ increased confidence was in a large part connected to being able to see themselves in terms of their strengths, which they could then identify, harness and utilise. And an interesting and recurring theme was that students reclaimed strengths that had previously been perceived as weaknesses. The authors says strengths identified though StrengthsQuest are often better seen as talents that may be undeveloped and raw and therefore are not necessarily or consistently having a positive impact upon the person concerned or others. However, when honed through skill and knowledge, those talents would become true strengths.

Increased confidence towards study and practical placements was a consistent benefit reported by students, both because they could

For some students, the project lead to dramatic changes of intended career direction, as they uncovered strengths and looked to match those with their professional aspirations. Others found that their involvement in the project gave them the confidence to pursue career directions outside their fields or in self-employment or research fields. Students also reported breakthroughs in their personal and work relationships through greater awareness of their strengths.

Narrative of Strengths

Of the 12 students who undertook the StrengthsQuest coaching, five went on to take part in a one-off Narrative of Strengths interview, based around semi-structured questions designed to bring forth stories of the interviewees’ primary strength and where it fitted into their personal story. Most were able to identify being ‘apprenticed’ into the strength, often by a family member, had trained themselves in developing that strength, or identified specific experiences which further developed their strength.

Of those students, three reported important outcomes from the interview, one reported helpful outcomes and the remaining student did not attribute anything in particular to the interview.

Kay says the Narrative of Strengths interviews were intended to give “roots” to the newly identified strengths and the interview results suggested that for most participants the interviews helped give more life, meaning and sustenance to the strengths.

Looking forward

The authors say that the pilot study supported the use of StrengthsQuest coaching and Narrative of Strengths interviews to help students identify the unique strengths they bring to their professions. And while use of StrengthsQuest alone may help students identify strengths, further coaching, group work and Narrative of Strengths interviews deepened students’ understanding of those strengths, their context, and how best to use them to benefit their personal and professional lives.

Kay is writing a further paper with David Epston on the potential to include Narrative of Strengths interviews in strengths-based counselling and social work models for use with clients in strengthbased agencies. And she would like to see StrengthsQuest become available to all Unitec students but particularly those in the Social Practice and Nursing fields. Kay, Ksenija and Sue are also hoping that further research can be undertaken following the success of this pilot study.

Contact: Kay Ingamells Lecturer Faculty of Social and Health Sciences Department of Social Practice Email: kingamells@unitec.ac.nz

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(L-R) Joint winners Sheree Veysey and Keily Murphy with Dean of Research and Postgraduate studies, Associate Professor Simon Peel, and first runner-up Leigh Townsend.

Your three minutes start now A group of Unitec postgraduate students took up the challenge to present their research work in just three minutes, at Unitec’s inaugural Three Minute Thesis competition.

An exciting new feature of the recent Unitec Research Symposium, the Three Minute Thesis (3MT) competition, saw a group of masters and doctoral students given three minutes each to succinctly present their research to an audience in a bid to be crowned the winner. The 3MT competition began at the University of Queensland in 2008 and has quickly grown in popularity across Australasia.

It challenges post-graduate students to pitch their research to an intelligent but non-academic audience in no more than three minutes and with just one static Powerpoint slide.

Eight contestants (seven masters students and one doctoral candidate) from a range of Unitec post-graduate programs took to the stage to battle it out ­— not so much for the cash prizes — but for the unique opportunity to test their skills in front of leading researchers and judges and be the inaugural winner.

The presentations were judged on the basis of communication style, significance, comprehension, engagement and creativity.

Organisers were pleased to see academic staff, fellow students and supervisors coming out to lend their support.

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The judging panel composed of Jonathan Leaver, Associate Professor, Civil Engineering; Ray Meldrum, Executive Dean, Academic Development; Gillian Whalley, Associate Dean Research, Social and Health Sciences; Marcus Williams, Associate Dean Research, Creative Industries and Business; and David Coltman, Executive Director, Student and Community Engagement, had their work cut out for them given the skilful lineup of presenters.

better understanding to the growing complexity of the deans’ role, Keily hopes her research will lead to solutions on how to better support and equip the deans to become more effective in their leadership roles.

Sheree Veysey, a Master of Social Practice student, and Keily Murphy, a Master of Educational Leadership and Management student, were declared joint winners with the judges being unable to separate them. Sheree’s research is about ‘Discriminatory experiences from health professionals shared by clients with a diagnosis of Borderline Personality Disorder’ while Keily’s research focussed on ‘Examining and interpreting the deans/house leaders roles in secondary schools.’

Sheree says that Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) affects about two percent of the population, including a number of media celebrities we see everyday. Individuals with BPD experience high distress and have a tendency towards self-harm and suicide.

Existing research suggests that this group is subject to stigma, negative attitudes and a lack of empathy from health professionals who may see their clients as not really ill, Sheree says.

Master of Osteopathy student Leigh Townsend, whose study was about ‘The effectiveness of a mindfulness-based stress reduction programme on self-reported pain, pain acceptance, resilience and quality of life in people with moderate/severe Rheumatoid Arthritis’ was declared first runner-up.

“Being able to summarise and communicate a complex research project and convince the audience of the value and benefits of the work in three minutes is a very difficult task but a very useful skill to have,” says Associate Professor Simon Peel, Unitec’s Dean of Research and Postgraduate Studies. “We were really impressed with the students who entered this inaugural event and we have plans to make it even bigger next year. Our aim is to tie the Unitec event into the larger Australasian competition and give our students the chance to compete alongside their peers on a larger stage”

For her exploratory research, Sheree asked a small group of selfselected participants to talk about the discriminatory experiences they have had in their interactions with health professionals, as well as what they valued as helpful behaviour from them. Her research noted themes of diagnostic stigma, lack of inquiry, judgment and misunderstanding, and a lack of transparency about why health care decisions were being made. It also established that the participants valued health care professionals who built relationships with them and were able to see their difficulties and their strengths.

Speaking about her research, joint winner Keily Murphy says that middle leadership in our secondary schools is complex, and in the current structure, the deans are seen as the link, the glue, and the problem solvers for staff, parents, and the community.

As young people bring more social and emotional problems to schools and secondary school teachers have increased pressure to get high academic results from the same students, Keily says that “being the dean in the middle is more like being in the muddle.”

Using focus groups and interviews with senior leaders, Keily’s research established that across all schools, “there is a continuing failure to address the work-load issues and the leadership capabilities of deans at the cost of our students.” In providing a

Joint winner Sheree Vesey with her thesis supervisor Associate Professor Helen Gremillion, from the Department of Social Practice.

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A six-legged perspective The new head of Unitec’s Department of Natural Sciences, Professor Linton Winder, is an ecologist and an entomologist and says he is looking forward to learning more about the ecology and insects of New Zealand.

Unitec’s new Head of Department for Natural Sciences, Professor Linton Winder, is excited about the opportunities to research in New Zealand, an ecological environment in stark contrast to his native England. “I’ve got so much to learn about New Zealand’s ecology and conservation priorities — that is one of the great things about moving to a new country, you expand your knowledge and you learn more. New Zealand has a world-renowned reputation in conservation biology and it has dealt with some urgent problems

very imaginatively, especially in using small offshore islands to conserve species. So I come here knowing that in many ways it has led the world in saving and conserving threatened species.”

Linton, an ecologist and entomologist, is no stranger to this part of the world, having spent three years at the University of the South Pacific in Fiji, serving as Head of Biology and then Associate Dean (Research and Consultancy) and Professor of Agricultural Entomology. His research focus in Fiji leaned towards conservation

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biology due to the large tracts of native forest that still exist there.

“There is quite limited knowledge of the conservation status and ecology of these forests, especially in relation to insects. It was great to work with talented and committed scientists from the Pacific at USP.”

is that you can use natural enemies — organisms already present in the environment — instead of pesticides. There is clearly lots of gain because you don’t spend money on pesticides, you don’t have the consequential environmental effects and it has a lot of biodiversity benefits as well. And it potentially has economic benefits, particularly for people in developing countries, because you don’t have to buy pest control services with dollars — you hold them intrinsically within the farming landscape.”

He ran and coordinated several projects, one with co-researchers Bill Aalbersberg, Marika Tuiwawa and Hilda Waqa, based within the university’s Institute of Applied Sciences, looking at the distribution of beetles across different forest types, funded by the UK’s Darwin Initiative programme. A further project with Professor Pete Lockhart from Massey University attracted funding from NZ Aid in collaboration with Landcare New Zealand, again through the Institute of Applied Sciences, and involved establishing a lab for molecular biology for use by masters and PhD students.

“We were using molecular biology to answer questions in conservation biology. For example, a project that Pete supported focussed on endemic frogs found on the Fiji islands that are very interesting biologically. In this project, researchers looked at the genetic isolation of frog sub-populations. By looking at their genetic makeup you can see how distinct the sub-populations are from each other which can help with developing conservation strategies.”

Modern biology

On returning to the UK in 2008 he joined the University of Exeter, where his role as Research and Knowledge Transfer Manager supporting the School of Biosciences, was outside his normal academic focus. “It was a very interesting role and I learned lots of different skills that really added to my capability. We helped secure research grants, link with businesses, strengthen relationships with overseas universities and bring academics together to develop joint research proposals. Exeter’s researchers are at the cutting edge of modern biology, using molecular-based and systems techniques to understand fundamental biological processes”. The experience of working in this supporting role, he says, provided a fantastic insight into how modern biology works.

“Multidisciplinary collaboration is at the absolute centre of modern biology, and that is because it requires mathematics, engineering, physics and more. Systems Biology looks at processes in a holistic manner and is very different to the traditional reductionist philosophy of science; input from different disciplines is essential.”

Linton says that mathematics and biology are very closely linked because so many problems in environmental science are about prediction. “For example, in 50 years’ time, what will be the implications on our climate due to changes in C02? What will be the effect of human population increase on our use of land for agriculture? These types of questions can only be addressed by mathematic modelling.”

Natural enemies

Linton’s research career started with his PhD, which was undertaken at the world’s longest-established agricultural research station, Rothamsted Research, and investigated the use of conservation biological control in agricultural crops. “The idea

His research looked at interactions between aphids (pests) and beetles (beneficial predators) in wheat crops — using computer simulation to investigate the interactions between them.

He says that while natural enemies are normally present in the agricultural landscape, the intensive use of land requires good practices and knowledge of the ecologies of natural enemies to sustain their populations.

“When you use pesticides you kill the aphids but you can also kill the beetles and that creates big problems because aphid populations respond very quickly as they have a lifecycle that is completed in weeks, whereas beetles have lifecycles measured in years. So it is a lot easier for the pests to recover after spraying than the natural enemies, which is a serious problem in agriculture.”

He says an integrated pest management approach — where there is a reliance on both natural enemies and pesticides (that are used as little as possible) — is now common. Integrated management allows informed decisions to be made on the best management system to use at the time. “It’s a well-supported approach throughout the world. For example, in New Zealand, the wine industry uses integrated approaches because it is cost effective and environmentally beneficial.”

Worlds apart

Linton says with 80 per cent of land in the UK under agricultural production, the battle for conserving biodiversity lies primarily in conserving organisms in the agricultural landscape. “There are pockets of forests and there are hedgerows as well as other habitat features. They all add up so species can still be conserved within quite intensively-managed agricultural systems.”

New Zealand, he says, is another story. “The conservation issues in New Zealand are very different to those in Fiji or the UK and so that’s a fantastic experience for someone who is interested in biology. Invasive or introduced species are a critical issue here — whereas in the UK they have caused relatively little impact so far.

I’m going to develop my entomological research further and look for new opportunities as well. It’s a great adventure and life is far too short, so I’m determined to pack in as much as I can.”

Contact: Dr Linton Winder Professor and Head of Department Faculty of Social and Health Sciences Department of Natural Sciences Email: lwinder@unitec.ac.nz

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Mapping their futures An interactive mapping exhibition now on at the Auckland Museum is the culmination of many months of collaborative research and implementation by a group of Unitec design and computing students, their supervisors and Museum staff.

A group of Unitec design and computing students are being celebrated for their contribution to a mapping exhibition at Auckland Museum, launched in October. You Are Here: Mapping Auckland is a new exhibition that brings together maps of Auckland spanning the past 200 years with a purpose-built, interactive computer table enabling Museum visitors to map their own story of Auckland.

The Unitec students, who worked extensively on the project for seven months, were from graphic design, product design, photography and computing. The consensus was that working and researching solutions collaboratively created a new and innovative exhibition that they couldn’t have achieved alone. The project began when Unitec product design lecturer Cris de Groot and his long-time collaborator, Kathy Waghorn, from the School of Architecture and Planning at the University of Auckland, agreed to partner with the Museum and bring in students who could be involved as part of their course work.

“The Museum has a massive collection of over 10,000 maps, including maps of Auckland dating back to the early 1800s and they wanted to bring a selection of these together in some kind of exhibition,” says Cris. “They approached us because they had seen a project Kathy and I did at the Gus Fisher Gallery a few years ago, which involved a huge map of Auckland on a table, a few hundred kilos of playdough, and a guest list of planners and thinkers invited to remodel it their own way,” says Cris de Groot.

The idea of an interactive map of Auckland on a table carried over to this project, although this time, rather than targeting experts, the table was seen as something for the general public to engage with and the concept was based around computers instead of playdough.

With monitors and keyboards dotted around the edges, people are able to interact as they plot their stories under different headings including ‘love’, ‘celebration’, ‘family history’ and ‘adventure’. “The idea was that people’s memories and the way they understand Auckland could be put in this map,” says Cris. “People could think about their stories in Auckland as a geographical region and contribute to a psycho-geographic map.”

The student journey

The tasks within the project were divided by student expertise.

Third-year product design student Amie Holman, who led on overall project management liaising with Museum staff, the lecturers and fellow students, says the first ‘real world’ challenge came early in the piece. “The first thing was to understand what the Museum wanted. We had a few meetings, as we really needed to find out what the map table should be,” says Amie. “They were really welcoming in terms of having us involved.”

The students worked “all day, every day”, to carry out research and usertesting, with the anticipation of high public interest a key motivator.

“A lot of things we do are in-house and the tutors are the only ones who

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get to see our work. With a project like this, people are going to come in and interact with what we’ve made,” says Amie. “They will react to it, and they’ll have an opinion, which is really exciting.”

a projector and mirror above. It is reminiscent of a folded-up map with the monitors acting like lines in the map.

Within a month of the project starting the students had created the first basic prototype and with feedback from the Museum’s project staff it went through further refinement and improvement. Product design student Mike Furniss, who led on research of the table design and overall layout of the room, says the definition stage was not only critical, but also an entirely necessary part of product design.

“That’s a huge part of what we do,” says Mike. “People are always going to have ideas of how they think a project should turn out.

It’s our job to consider those ideas, research them, create some depth and breadth around the ideas, and come up with solutions.

Throughout that process, things will always change.” Mike says he also relied on the Museum’s technical expert, Grant Rewi, to help him identify the constraints within the project, like materials, space and time frame. “It’s an historical building, so we couldn’t fix the table to the room. It had to be large enough and heavy enough that it couldn’t be moved around once it was in there. Also, they only had five weeks to construct everything, once the design was finalised, so the materials had to be easy to use. In the end, we went with a steel base and MDF.” And while, the design and photography students focused on their specialist area, four computing students looked after the all-important technological aspects.

“What the designers wanted and the Museum asked for, the computer students were able to deliver,” says Cris. “They have also taken it a bit further and established access to the programme through web and iPhone. Two of the graduates will have an ongoing role modifying and maintaining the programme for the Museum.” In its finished form the table is designed to be userfriendly. It undulates like the landscape does — with screens at different levels — and the image of Auckland is reflected onto it via

Collaboration

The number of students working on the project and the differences in their backgrounds, created both advantages and challenges within the project. “It was definitely challenging at times,” says Amie. “I think design and computer science people have a different language. But once we got our heads around that and worked together, it started to come together. It was really great for us to learn about their approach and knowledge.”

Design and Visual Arts acting head of department Tanya Eccleston says the students, all in the third year of Bachelor programmes, should feel proud of their work and professionalism. “They’ve embedded the table within the collection in an innovative way.

I think it is a great achievement, and a credit to Cris and Kathy for their project management,” says Tanya. “On a sculptural level I think it’s really successful.”

Speaking at the opening, Auckland Museum director Roy Clare gave the exhibition his seal of approval, and said that it had opened the door for future partnerships with the tertiary sector, involving other artefacts from the Museum’s vast collection. “It’s a really good reminder that scale in a Museum is not the measure,” he said. “And I suspect one of the many things we take away from this is that we can do more projects like this. We don’t have to reach overseas to create them. This exploration of partnership is very important.”

Contact: Cris de Groot Senior Lecturer Faculty of Creative Industries and Business Department of Design and Visual Arts Email: cdegroot@unitec.ac.nz

Steep learning curve The mapping project provided exciting new experiences for Bachelor of Computing students. The application they built consisted of four programmes, all sharing the same database — a touch screen application, web application, mobile web application and an application to drive the projector — so research was important and the learning curve was steep.

“Integrating the different layers of technology was quite complex and well beyond their level of experience,” says Bachelor of Computer Science programme leader and senior lecturer Chris Manford. “They had to learn to solve all the technology problems presented.”

Yet Chris says the hardest part was not the technology, but working on a project with many other people. Solutions were reworked as

people changed their minds and had new ideas, and he estimates each student spent more than 500 hours on it.

He says he is “very happy” with the project outcomes, both as a research and learning experience and in providing the Museum with useful technology that moves them closer to their goals. If built by a commercial developer, he says the solution might cost in the region of $40,000. For the trainees, the research and implementation experience was invaluable, and something they’d only get to do in the real world if they were lucky.

“Generally employers would not trust trainees on such a complex and high profile project.”

24 » Editorial

» Advance Summer 2011/2012

A world of water Unitec Head of Civil Engineering, Dr David Phillips, is an engineer and a surfer and he tells us how these joint passions motivate research projects that make a difference to coastal environments.

David has long been involved in the oceanography of natural surfing headlands and engineering design and construction of multi-purpose artificial reefs, both for surfing and to control shoreline erosion, but the common factor in much of his research is water — tides, currents, waves, sediment, stormwater and wastewater and the management of those factors. This water concept is embraced in his research vision: Nga kaitiaki O te Wai Moana (The Sustainable Management of the Water/Coast).

“Water seems to be the unifying factor in a lot of the research and consulting projects that I’ve been involved with. On a personal level I love the water for surfing and swimming and it’s where I feel the

best, so that adds to my strong interest in water quality and the impact of stormwater quality and quantity. The Mauri (life-force) of water is important in New Zealand both for recreation and in society for drinking and commercial purposes (e.g. irrigation).

Civil and Environmental Engineering plays a vital role in providing infrastructure and assessment of risk related to New Zealand’s water future.”

With co-authors Dr Shaw Mead and Dr Tim Haggitt, David has recently contributed to an Auckland Council study on how land use in the Auckland region affects the surrounding marine areas. To achieve this, the trio developed a Geographical Information System

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» Civil Engineering

» Advance Summer 2011/2012

(GIS) to integrate information on marine ecology, coastal vegetation, coastal fish, catchment characteristics, potential sediment run-off volumes and hydrodynamic characteristics for the Auckland region.

after any reefs are installed, and concluded that any potential for increased blockages could be mitigated by increased monitoring and maintenance, and grading any built-up sand away from the stormwater outfalls as required.

The project evaluated and classified the ecological significance of various marine environments in the Auckland region, such as open coast, harbours and estuaries, while the second stage determined the potential sediment run-off from catchments associated with any marine receiving environment classified as significant.

Based on a range of factors, the team was able to give each regionally-significant marine receiving-environment a simple red, amber or green classification of vulnerability that can be used as the initial basis for instigating land-use controls within catchment areas.

The assessment of the marine ecological communities found 27 of the 133 reporting areas were ranked as regionally significant and of those, 16 were threatened by high levels of sediment load. Seven of those were considered at high risk of sediment being deposited, due to factors related to how waves and currents in those areas carried sediment away and because the areas were sensitive to the impacts of suspended sediments (held in water) and sediment deposits.

The conclusion was that of the 27 regionally-significant receiving environments identified, seven were classified as high risk (red), with the remaining 20 classified as medium risk (amber).

New ways of thinking

At the same time, David was commissioned to report on the potential impact of a proposed multi-purpose artificial reef project off the coast of Orewa, North of Auckland. While he is an internationally-recognised expert in the sediment transport on natural surfing headlands and the civil engineering aspects of multi-purpose reefs — such as pumping systems for the sand slurry used to construct the reefs — and is the founder and chief editor of academic publication The Reef Journal, his role in the Orewa project was in assessing the impact on local stormwater systems.

“If you arrive at Orewa beach at high tide there are rocks and water and no dry sand for public amenity and kids particularly to play on, and it’s like that for a number of hours. There is a longshore drift that transports sand southwards down to the estuary where it is deposited and accumulates, and then they get motor-scrapers to transport the sand back up the beach and put it back and then the same thing happens.” Under the reef proposal, 12 reefs would be put in place off the Orewa coast to change the wave direction and intensity, therefore reducing the longshore transport and allow sand to stabilise along the beach. “The reefs would rotate the wave and swell direction so that it becomes an equilibrium beach where the waves go in and out rather than along the shore.”

But there were concerns that as the sand increased, it may block the stormwater outlets on the beach and increase the risk of flooding. One suggestion was to re-route all the stormwater outfall to the estuary but as the council had already deemed this an unfeasible option, David quickly discounted it. He spent time with council planners and engineers, visited many other beaches to check outfalls and assessed the existing beach levels before and

Stormwater innovation

“I also got quite innovative with suggestions for new technology that they could potentially use to improve the stormwater on Orewa Beach, such as a Hynds WaStop, which is a big black plastic insert that goes inside the stormwater pipe at the outlet.” The floppy rubber insert stops debris and sand from flowing back up the pipe and children from crawling in but when water comes the other way it flips it open to allow it to flow out. “They potentially make a big difference to the maintenance and don’t look like prison cells on the beach.”

David says that many of the stormwater outlets on Auckland beaches are dangerous and ugly and the designs often contribute to costly blockages. Many have padlocked metal grills, which not only get tangled in seaweed, which increases blockages, but would make it difficult to release anyone stuck inside the pipe. Many of the outfalls should also have an outlet at the top, so that if the pipe blocked up with sand or debris, the water could still flow out over the top, potentially avoiding teams of workers spending days unblocking the drains. “It’s interesting in New Zealand because we spend a lot of time and money maintaining parks and reserves by mowing grass and clearing rubbish, but we spend very little cleaning and maintaining our beaches. Clearing up once a week and after storms would stop the debris and seaweed blocking up the stormwater pipes. ”The good news is that the Auckland Council is moving forward in this area and has renourished sand on a number of inner city beaches and recognised the amenity value to the community.”

“Orewa beach is a multi-million dollar asset for the landowners, the local people who use it, and tourists. If the reefs go in, there will be good opportunities for diving and fishing as the marine life grows on them and it should improve the surfing conditions as well, but the main reason it is there is to keep sand on the beach and prevent ongoing erosion. When it comes to coastal protection, the things we have been doing haven’t always been the best possible solutions. Rock walls on the beach have been the historical method of choice with a long history of failure and adverse impacts and really represent land protection, whilst in some situations an offshore submerged reef along with beach re-nourishment and planting of suitable native coastal species may be a better option.

This reef idea is cutting edge and works with nature, but it takes a while to break down the barriers and perceptions of the public, and its not always going to be perfect as we are working with nature, and potentially large coastal forces from waves and currents. We are promoting “coastal advance” with the offshore reef concept, where the land actually accretes seaward so that natural dune systems can be recreated.” The work at Orewa has currently been notified for public consultation as part of a Resource Consent and will most likely progress to hearings in the future to determine if construction will take place.

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Researching a rubble reef

Changing the face of another iconic New Zealand beach is the subject of another ongoing research project. Following suggestions from locals that the rubble from the Canterbury earthquakes could be put to beneficial use off the Sumner coast to change the wave pattern and reduce erosion, he was involved in a pilot study to look at the feasibility of the proposal. Computer modelling was used to look at break points and directions and concluded that creating off-shore reefs would dramatically change and enhance the waves by allowing them to break much further out and take the energy out of them.

“You can build up a kilometre-long pile of rubble offshore, which can change the focus of the waves as they come in to cause better coastal protection and as a side effect, maybe better waves.

Sumner Beach has very bad erosion and, in a similar way to Orewa Beach, it has no beach at high tide, it’s all rocks. This would have a really positive impact on shoreline erosion, and would help create

off-shore diving reefs and better surfing waves. It would also mean that you could use the rubble for something positive rather than dumping it in a landfill. And this is a free resource, which would otherwise cost a lot of money.”

David says that he and his co-authors will submit their report to the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority and hope further work may be funded to look at the possibilities. “We chose this as a case study to offer something positive to the region and particularly to Sumner, because they’ve had a hard time. But the work is applicable around the world and is potentially cutting-edge sea level rise research. As water comes up, if you build these rubble mounds and reefs a lot further offshore, then energy goes out of the waves further out, and you get a beach that balances with that. Sand will accrete on the shore rather than being taken away. And this is really important because as sea levels rise, the waves are going to be more intense on the shoreline and are going to erode more of the beach.”

Working with nature Finding innovative new ways to deal with stormwater is something David Phillips is pretty familiar with.

His design for potentially one of the world’s largest rain gardens has now been built on Auckland’s North Shore and he has further plans to conduct ongoing research into how it performs.

The rain garden is an alternative to a traditional piped stormwater system, instead allowing runoff to permeate through sandy, porous soil, which filters out impurities and slows the flow of water during peak rain periods. David designed the rain garden with Steven Rankin to service a new church carpark at the historic Chapel of St Peter, which is owned by the Birkdale Beach Haven Parish. “Low impact design is something that councils are really keen to push but not many developers go for it — they prefer to go for the standard methods and stormwater drains — but to protect the environment and the harbour it’s important to get sediment and oil out of the water.” One way to do that is with a large underground settling tank and another is with a rain garden.

David says that while councils want innovative new ideas, they also feel apprehensive and there is a lot of research and work involved in proving that it will work. And while developers may also baulk at the initial cost, David says this should be weighed up against environmental and long-term maintenance aspects. “Our church clients on this project were supportive of trying a different idea and it backed up their mission statement to care for the environment. I’ve been a big proponent of low impact design and I push for innovations in stormwater systems, particularly where it discharges to the coast, as long-term maintenance is reduced and it creates a natural habitat. It’s about trying to do things differently for a better result.”

“At this site we used natural features of the 350m2 garden to absorb rain water and contaminants so that the site absorbs the majority of the stormwater runoff which could put pressure on the nearby stream or harbour. High capacity drainage has also been installed to drain additional water away from the site when exceptionally heavy rain fall occurs,” explains David. “The rain garden uses bio-retention methods which allow any contaminants produced by vehicles using the car park to be absorbed by the rain garden. It is unusual as rain gardens are normally designed on a small scale whereas this is very large — it may be the largest of this type in the world,” he adds.

David is looking to do further research at the site to monitor and sample the water flow and quality. “I’d really like to see the data on it and see how it is working. The results of that work will give us hard data around the project and what it has achieved.”

Contact: Dr David Phillips Head of Department Faculty of Technology and Built Environment Department of Civil Engineering Email: dphillips@unitec.ac.nz

» Completions

» Advance Summer 2011/2012

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Completions Unitec congratulates the following students who have recently completed postgraduate research projects at Unitec. Copies of these studies can be found in the Unitec Library or through the Unitec Research Bank, http://unitec.researchbank.ac.nz.

Master of Architecture (Professional) Name: Alfonso Sirilan Research: Architecture and movement.

Name: Terry Badham Research: Papakainga: Te Whau O Te Matauranga – ‘The garden of knowledge’ Hei Ronaki Wa I Te Ao Māori Ki A Puawai He Oranga Hou Hei Kitenga Tangata. Sustainable contemporary Māori development – creating new frontiers with a clear rear-view mirror.

Name: Julinana Karetina Research: Adaptive re-use principles strategically applied in the design of a social centre at the defunct Air Force base at Hobsonville.

Name: Eric Tell Research: How do we sustain regional architecture in the face of modern models of universal internationalist architecture?

Name: Rachael Dawkins Research: Engaging sensibility.

Master of Business

Name: Suksamon Sumphonphakdy Research: Which practical models could be implemented for human resource management to retain senior managers in the Lao financial services industry?

Master of Education

Name: Bettina Yule Research: An investigation of student perceptions of quality in a secondary school.

Master of International Communication

Name: Melanie Disse Research: The impact of directness on the perception of trust in intercultural communication in business relationships.

Master of Osteopathy

Name: Heather Grossmith Research: The reliability and validity of manual examination procedures for the detection of musculoskeletal dysfunction in people with bronchial asthma.

Name: Heather Nicholls Research: The effect of a single application of muscle energy technique on hip extension range of motion.

Name: Alastair Treacher Research: Immediate effects of high-velocity thrust to the cervical spine on pressure pain threshold and pain-free grip strength in subjects with lateral epicondylalgia.

Name: Yohanna Davidson Research: An investigation into the transition from student to practicing osteopath.

Name: Brian Evans Research: Teaching practices that support high achievement in the education of Pacific boys.

Name: Jeanette Vreede Research: The effects of osteopathy in the cranial field on stress as measured by salivary cortisol levels.

Name: Anthony Wareham Research: Evaluating the effectiveness of the plumbing and gas-fitting pre-trades programmes in New Zealand.

Name: James Crossley Research: Observer reliability assessing “threshold levels” in colour doppler imaging of vibration of sacroiliac joint video clips.

Name: Angela Edlin Research: The nature of written feedback: A study of postgraduate lecturers’ perspectives.

Name: Heike Ehrlenbach Research: A preliminary investigation of the effect of the osteopathic lymphatic pump technique on salivary immunoglobulin A levels in asymptomatic subjects “A single system design pilot study”.

Master of Educational Leadership and Management

Name: Rachel Peake Research: Middle leadership of teams in large New Zealand secondary schools.

Name: Ross Scrymgeour Research: Factors influencing the recruitment of primary and intermediate-aged boy boarders.

Name: Karen Brinsden Research: Improving teacher appraisal through action research: one schools’ journey.

Name: Hayley Michelson Research: Perspectives on quality assurance methods - a comparison of osteopathic programmes in two countries: a pilot study.

Name: Scott Pender Research: Measurement of sacroiliac joint stiffness with doppler imaging of vibrations.

Master of Social Practice

Name: Jocelyn Toclo Research: The Experience of Chinese, Indian and Filipino Migrant Health Workers in New Zealand.

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