Advance - Winter 2007

20 07

Advance

THE UNITEC MAGAZINE OF INNOVATION AND RESEARCH WINTER 07

Networking community research New website makes collaboration easier – p5

Exporting New Zealand design Centre opens Chinese market to Kiwi designers – p7

Creating a safer internet economy Manabars technology introduces payment for content – p8

In the limelight Turnbull Library Fellow Jo Drayton writes Marsh mystery – p11

EDITORIAL

Interestingly, the muscular strength that Unitec has developed in the real world application of research is being flexed collaboratively, rather than in competition, with other institutions. Just as the Government is taking a “New Zealand Inc” approach to addressing barriers that education organisations face, Unitec is actively engaged with a range of other organisations to achieve successful research outcomes, and continues to expand beyond the constraints of polytechnic status.

editor Jade Reidy sub-editor Claudia Mischke contributor Shay Lambert

A prestigious Woolf Fisher Trust Fellowship enabled Dr Andrew Codling, Unitec’s Deputy President, Academic, to take time out for research into the eight new universities to emerge in the UK following changes in legislation. Unitec intends to develop significant links with two of these universities (see page 4).

cover image Dr David Hawkins design Meredith Smith printing Norcross Group of Companies Advance is published by Unitec New Zealand ISSN 1176-7391 phone +64 9 815 2945 freephone 0800 10 95 10 web www.unitec.ac.nz address Carrington Rd, Mt Albert, Private Bag 92025, Auckland Mail Centre, Auckland 1142, New Zealand Disclaimer Unitec New Zealand has used reasonable care to ensure that the information in this publication is accurate at the time of publication.

However, to the extent permitted by law, Unitec is not liable for, and makes no warranties or representations as to such accuracy and may change or correct any such information without prior notice.

JACINTA EDWARDS JAPANESE LANGUAGE GRADUATE

In awarding Unitec the largest single share of the Growth and Innovation Pilot funding for 2007, the Tertiary Education Commission recognised the strength our dual sector institution has in fusing cutting edge ideas with the realities of the commercial world.

The $2 million Unitec was awarded will support collaborative research projects within two of the four focus sectors identified by the Government as crucial to enhancing New Zealand’s wider economic base – information and communication technology (ICT) and design. Accelerating the growth of Auckland’s ICT skills is the first project, while the second concentrates on the creation of a community of design-led companies. The latter, just under way, is featured on page 6 of this issue of Advance. Also featured in this issue is a story about an exciting partnership that will help New Zealand designers access the Chinese marketplace.

Unitec’s focus on research that both informs teaching and advanced practice is bearing fruit across campus, with the most visible example being in the School of Design. Two staff members, Areta Wilkinson and Julian Hooper, are represented in the prestigious third Auckland Triennial exhibition, Turbulence, while three photography students made a clean sweep of the student sections of the 2006 Metro/Canon Young Photographers’ Competition. A growing number of Unitec staff also hold award-winning PhDs and are being granted fellowships, whose focus feeds directly back into the communities we serve and students whose professional development we nurture. There’s much to celebrate.

CONTACT Prof Gael McDonald Vice President, Research email gmcdonald@unitec.ac.nz

RESEARCH IN BRIEF

Taking the pulse of How seabirds habituate to handling climate change New Zealand has one of the richest Incontrovertible scientific facts about climate change are gradually eroding the global “climate” of denial about the effects of 21st century living. Yet, lack of mobilisation at a community level may reflect how difficult it is to rationally conceive the enormity of the problem.

Artists, says Unitec School of Design lecturer Janine Randerson, have a role to play in breaking through this barrier.

By translating objective scientific methods into a sensory work of art, Randerson’s Anemocinegraph installation stimulates a connection with nature at a visceral level, rather than reasoning it as an object to be exploited. Hemispheric projection screens (pictured below) show satellitegenerated images of local weather, while the sound pulse is based on data from a sonic anemometer at a solarpowered weather station that monitors carbon emissions in the North Island.

Anemocinegraph is on display this month at the Shanghai Science and Technology Museum and will move to Sydney’s UTS Gallery in July.

Randerson’s paper, “Between Reason and Sensation: Antipodean Artists and Climate Change”, will be published later this year in Leonardo: Journal of the International Society of Arts, Sciences and Technology.

CONTACT Janine Randerson Lecturer School of Design email jranderson@unitec.ac.nz

seabird fauna on earth. To maintain this diversity, endangered species are translocated to predator-free environments. Petrels are vulnerable to predators because they nest in underground burrows. These birds have to be translocated to offshore islands as chicks and hand-reared independently of their parents because more highly mobile adults simply return to their original location.

Birds exposed to extended handling commonly show a physiological stress response that may affect their survival, but the long-term effects of human intervention are as yet unstudied. Dr Nigel Adams, from the School of Natural Sciences, is undertaking collaborative research of seabirds to highlight some of the more subtle implications of translocation methods.

Results of the first study of 12 grey-faced petrel chicks (shown here with Adams on a private island off Te Henga in West Auckland) indicate that extended handrearing of wild caught chicks is associated with a reduced corticosterone (stress) response to handling compared to chicks raised entirely by their parents. The benefits of this habituation still need to be weighed against any possible alteration in sensitivity of response to other potentially harmful stressors that would normally elicit an adaptive response.

The considerable variation found in the magnitude of petrel stress response raises the possibility that the methods being used in general to translocate birds may be genetically selecting those with a more laid back temperament.

They adapt better to handling. To investigate this hypothesis, Adams is now researching saddlebacks. This iconic song bird has had a long history of successful translocations.

CONTACT Dr Nigel Adams Senior Lecturer School of Natural Sciences email nadams@unitec.ac.nz

Mapping hydrogen fuel sources Changing over to alternative fuels requires careful planning to ensure the infrastructure, supply chains and variables within each region of New Zealand are accounted for.

Unitec researchers have played a key role in the six-year, $6 million collaborative project to prove that New Zealand can locally produce sufficient hydrogen for vehicle fuel. The project, which began in 2002, reached another milestone last December with a second report by Dr Jonathan Leaver, Unitec’s Engineering Research Manager, and Andrew Baglino, a visiting research fellow. The report, “Regional Scenarios for the Development of a Hydrogen Economy in New Zealand” developed both a market forces approach and an interventionist approach, and analysed each of the country’s 13 regions using the powerful computer model developed at Unitec to account for over 500 variables.

This year, Leaver is leading a team of researchers for one of four phases of a $530,000 contract funded by the Foundation for Research, Science and Technology to determine how and when the transition to a hydrogen economy could occur. Unitec’s $85,000 of funding will be spent on determining how well the plausible sources of energy for producing hydrogen, such as lignite coal, fit with the build-up of hydrogen-generating plants and other essential infrastructure.

Results will be presented at an industry forum in December 2007.

CONTACT Dr Jonathan Leaver Engineering Research Manager School of The Built Environment email jleaver@unitec.ac.nz

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RESEARCH IN BRIEF

Western music’s impact on China

Chilled strawberry plants yield better crops in Auckland The most enticing part of research into strawberries is eating the fruit. Despite that, Unitec’s School of Natural Sciences has New Zealand’s only strawberry agronomy research team publishing in refereed journals. Perhaps because the worst part of studying this compact plant is picking the fruit…

The team of Ingrid Ennis and Dr Bill Bussell, along with Professor Chris Triggs from the University of Auckland, has spent eight years on bended knees assessing whether the Californian winter system of cold nurseries, early planting dates and warmer soils in fruiting beds improves strawberry yields in the Auckland region.

When China embraced Western music in its Late Imperial period (1842-1911), the relationship was an unlikely one. To Chinese aesthetics, Western music was like chalk scratching on a blackboard; it lacked any harmonising effect. The two systems on which music was notated were polar opposites.

Dr Hong-yu Gong, a lecturer at Unitec’s School of Language Studies, explored the ways in which Western music was used as a political and evangelical vehicle in a Doctor of Philosophy thesis that won a coveted award from the University of Auckland this year.

In recognition of its excellence, the thesis,“Missionaries, Reformers and the Beginnings of Western Music in Late Imperial China”, was placed on the Dean of Graduate Studies List, an award given to only a few of the large number of PhDs granted each year.

The photo above depicts blind boys at a mission school in Fuzhou being taught to play simple Western instruments

by Christian missionaries. However, Western music was not only used to spread the word of God via hymns; Chinese political reformers also seized on it as a modernising tool. With a largely illiterate population, music was an ideal way to influence the masses.

Dr Gong’s thesis was described by a distinguished international examiner, Dr Han Kuo-Huang, as “a masterpiece of work in the field of musicology, ethnomusicology, Chinese music history and East-West cultural interaction”.

CONTACT Dr Hong-yu Gong Lecturer School of Language Studies email hgong@unitec.ac.nz

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Strawberries have long been grown in the warmest parts of the country, but are itinerant beings, spending their early lives in nurseries located in cooler climates before being transplanted to fruiting beds. This ensures an adequate number of chilling hours well before flowering.

The researchers used land in Mangere, at New Zealand’s largest strawberry garden, and a cool autumn site in Ohakune to grow strawberry runners.

They brought back runners from autumnal conditions that ranged from crisp sun, pouring rain and snow-closed roads.

The research showed that a strawberry plant that gets enough hours at chilling temperatures while its crown is growing, well before flowering, will have an increased growth rate and give more early fruit as well as a higher volume of total fruit.

CONTACT Ingrid Ennis Horticulture Programme Director School of Natural Sciences email iennis@unitec.ac.nz

The quality of teaching is not strained The face of higher education has shifted significantly in the past 15 years in the United Kingdom, with polytechnics gaining university status and new universities emerging to cater for a broadened range of subjects and students.

and learning. Both Bath Spa University and the University of Gloucestershire were identified as having a strong focus on quality teaching and student learning.

Unitec will pursue a closer relationship with both universities.

After winning a prestigious Woolf Fisher Fellowship late last year, Dr Andrew Codling, Unitec’s Deputy President, Academic (pictured), had the chance to spend 10 weeks in the UK to research higher education policy and management.

CONTACT Dr Andrew Codling Deputy President, Academic email acodling@unitec.ac.nz

When legislation was passed in 2004 for existing university colleges to gain university title without research degree-awarding powers, eight colleges took advantage of the opportunity. Dr Codling visited each of these universities to formally research their distinctive identities as new universities. Each is supporting a growing base of staff research. Most critical to their image was the strength of connection with, and service to, a defined local or regional community, a strength that Unitec is developing with its Waitakere campus in West Auckland.

One of the most significant aspects of the UK’s higher education, Codling says, is the increased emphasis on teaching

COMMUNITY STUDIES

Access to community research online In New Zealand, research on the tangata whenua, community and voluntary sector is scattered.

To bring unity to this diversity, Unitec is partnering a centre of excellence whose first offspring – an innovative research website – is up and walking.

At the moment, not a single New Zealand institution dedicates itself to studying the community and voluntary sector. If research is done at all, results are often published in inaccessible places. To address this issue, Unitec New Zealand has collaborated on the Clearing House research website, www.communityresearch.org.nz The site will provide an online tool for researchers to disseminate their work, allowing them to connect with other researchers and collaborate on projects. It also serves the beneficiaries of research; its existence was the catalyst for the development of a code of practice to empower participants and to guide researchers.

PARTNERING FOR EXCELLENCE The Draft Code of Practice has been developed collaboratively by a governance group. The group is drawn from a wide range of tertiary and community sector partners to the virtual Centre of Excellence for Tangata Whenua, Community and Voluntary Sector Research, a concept which evolved over three years. Committed partners include Unitec’s School of Community Development, Volunteering New Zealand, Philanthropy New Zealand; Massey, Waikato and AUT universities; the Social and Civic Policy Institute, the New Zealand Federation of Voluntary Welfare Organisations and the Community Sector Taskforce.

A living document whose content derives from iwi groups, practical community research experience and academic papers, the code is unique to the centre, although the ideas contained in it have previously been described and tested.

Margy-Jean Malcolm, Programme Director for Unitec’s Graduate Diploma in Not-For-Profit Management, is a member of the governance group. She believes the key to achieving widespread acceptance of the code lies in its practical, sector-led approach.

“We’re asking the sector to tell us what the benchmarks in research should be, and to provide practical approaches that promote high-quality research while supporting the interests of research participants,” Malcolm says.

or of researchers disappearing after their research is published, leaving behind a cynical community. Those risk factors can now be managed.”

Kamira has been contracted as project manager for another year. Besides bringing a wealth of experience in Tikanga Maori, she is a member of the Digital Strategy Advisory Group that advises Minister David Cunliffe on the National Digital Strategy. That interface between “on the ground” communities and new directions in technology is invaluable to development of the online Clearing House project.

ETHICS OF RESEARCH

The principles are grouped into four categories: participation, empowerment, social justice and moral responsibility.

Each set of principles has tangible measurements, or standards, attached to it.

The draft code contains a set of principles and standards against which researchers can compare their studies.

They can also use the code as a guide on how to undertake research.

The draft is available on the Clearing House website for comment and submissions, and is being discussed at forums and meetings around the country.

“The code helps researchers to position their work in terms of values, quality or ethics,” says Project Manager Robyn Kamira. “The principles and standards contained in it are those the sector says are important. Many researchers have heard anecdotally of communities that are fatigued by being over-researched,

FUNDING THE FUTURE Initial funding for the Clearing House has come from the Digital Strategy Community Partnership Fund and the ASB Community Trust, with Unitec as the fund holder.

The research centre will be looking to create new networks that generate creative partnerships. These partnerships, between researchers in the vital “third sector” of New Zealand’s society and communities, will address the perceived lack of a robust body of research and offer practical support for communities.

All researchers in the tangata whenua, community and voluntary sector are invited to upload their research and engage with the code of practice.

CONTACT Margy-Jean Malcolm Programme Director School of Community Development, Te Pae Whanake email mmalcolm@unitec.ac.nz

Robyn Kamira (left) and Margy-Jean Malcolm discuss the Clearing House project.

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DESIGN

Applying heat to the design element It can be difficult for medium-sized businesses to develop new products and services while still meeting the needs of their everyday, core business. A new Unitec innovation centre is bringing together a range of design-led businesses to collaborate on ideas. functions as a pre-incubator, although the two centres are distinct. It will also be a valuable resource for the MayDE project (see story on page 7), generating more real world work opportunities for the 1,800 or so would-be designers who graduate each year from New Zealand’s tertiary institutes.

OPPORTUNITIES FOR GRADUATES Hothouse member Mark Windsor (pictured) completed Unitec’s Bachelor of Product Design in 2005. He has spent the past year working for an international furniture design and manufacturing business, but says the Unitec project was a unique opportunity to get involved with a range of design-led companies.

“You don’t get many chances to work on conceptual projects, which is the aspect of design I enjoy most, and this is wholly conceptual and idea-generated.”

Hothouse member Mark Windsor is putting his Bachelor of Product Design to the test by generating design ideas.

Medium-sized businesses that want to grow often face a Catch-22 – because they are small, they don’t have the time and resources to look at and develop new opportunities. That’s where the Hothouse can help.

The Hothouse is a School of Design initiative, launched with $1.19 million of funding from the Tertiary Education Commission.

Project leaders Dr Cris De Groot and Dean Prebble are directing a team of 11 graduates and students from business and design programmes, and commercially viable ideas are already beginning to flow.

SPARKING NEW CONNECTIONS De Groot says that smaller companies often have limited time and resources to expand their businesses in new ways. “They have something that makes them unique – whether it’s a brand or a product, or an intellectual property – but are only able to concentrate on their core business. They can’t spend time and resources looking for the gaps in the market and the opportunities to grow in a different direction, and that’s where the Hothouse comes in.”

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A diverse range of organisations, from homeware and furniture businesses to software development companies and the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA), have been participating in workshops to identify opportunities. The ideas from the workshops are put onto cards that are mixed and matched by the Hothouse team to look for any new connections.

“It’s like putting Kathmandu and Navman together. You get Navmandu, which could be a bum bag with an in-built GPS system,” says De Groot.

He has already finished his first project for the Hothouse – designing tables made from aluminium and plywood – and says he is enjoying the unique atmosphere. “I’m hoping this will open up a lot of professional opportunities.”

CONTACT Dr Cris De Groot Programme Director School of Design email cdegroot@unitec.ac.nz Dean Prebble Director New Zealand Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship email dprebble@unitec.ac.nz

APPLYING COMMERCIAL HEAT Although the brainstorming process is fun, initial results are already looking commercially promising. “We will now work with the companies to define, distill and develop the ideas and identify the most viable options that have real world potential. We have funding for two years but the plan is to establish the Hothouse as a permanent centre for innovation.”

The Hothouse is located cheek by jowl with the School of Design’s business incubator, which mentors and provides facilities for graduates who already have marketable ideas. The Hothouse

COMPANIES INVOLVED IN THE HOTHOUSE • • • • • • • • •

Design Mobel (sleep systems) Douglas (pharmaceuticals) iVistra (information systems) Lexicon Group (publishing consulting) NIWA (weather institute) Robot Hosting (creates virtual teachers) Serato (multimedia) St Michel (bathroomware) Xsol (software)

DESIGN

China design centre a cultural shift Opportunities for New Zealand designers expanded in March this year with the opening of a brand new expo centre in Guangzhou, China. Unitec’s School of Design is a key partner in this.

Kiwi designers are making inroads into the massive Chinese market thanks to groundwork laid by the new Head of the School of Design.

When Dr David Hawkins arrived late last year at Unitec to take up the position, he brought with him an active collaboration with well-known Chinese property development company Mayland. The partnership was aimed not only at providing a conduit for cutting-edge design products into the world’s largest market, but also at addressing a deeper cultural shift.

Covering two million square metres, the Mayland Design Exchange (MayDe) brings China’s modern passions – education and consumerism – under one giant innovative roof.

HELPING CHINESE CUSTOMERS “China contains a whole group of people who’ve had their lifestyle defined for them by the Government,” says Hawkins. “They’re now serious consumers but are unsure what to make or buy, and how to discern. We’re providing them with the information to make their own decisions.”

The MayDE partnership, says Hawkins, could only happen with an institution such as Unitec.

“A conventional university wouldn’t be right because the objectives of MayDE are to keep ahead of trends and to deliver practical products. Unitec has the research capability and experience in the practical application of ideas to deliver on both objectives.”

Unitec will bring New Zealand expertise to Chinese design by working with designers, manufacturers and retailers to ensure the products that reach the shelves are those people actually want to buy.

EXPORTING KIWI DESIGN The MayDE partnership is projected to be self-sustaining by the end of year two, with revenue from consultancy fees, training contracts, design royalties and commission fees. MayDE’s three floors of shopping experience are well-stocked with leading edge designs from Europe and America, but New Zealand designs, says Associate Head of School Roger Bateman, have a key advantage.

“New Zealand is viewed by the Chinese as young and fresh, with new ideas,” he says. “Our collaboration gives Unitec students and graduates, as well as established designers, the chance to safely launch their products onto the largest consumer market in the world.”

While safety is important, Hawkins also wants to see local designers push themselves beyond their comfort zone.

“For New Zealand designers to be New Zealand-centric is not sustainable or healthy, given the small population base,” he says. “We have to have a serious engagement with export.”

SUPPORT FOR DESIGN EXCHANGE New Zealand Trade and Enterprise is backing the MayDE partnership. In a speech to the March International Education Summit in Auckland, the Minister of Trade, Phil Goff, reiterated that Asia is driving the global corporate training market, worth US$300 billion, and turning to international education suppliers to meet this surging demand.

Mayland is planning to build two more home expo centres in China and one in New York. If the New Zealand-designed homeware products are successful, there are plans to open a chain of branded stores throughout China to sell MayDE-developed products.

CONTACT Dr David Hawkins Head of School School of Design email dhawkins@unitec.ac.nz A model of the Mayland Home Expo Centre in Guangzhou, now open for business.

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INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

Generating a secure internet economy When Europeans began trading with Maori, communicable diseases were transacted along with goods. When the world began trading information through the Internet, similarly unwanted diseases were transmitted between hosts. And what’s more, hosts became disinclined to pay for either the goods or the vaccination programme. A Unitec-based project, called Manabars, has been incubating a radical framework for a new, immune economy.

Manabars technology has received fuel injections from Unitec student projects for the past five years, and is taking products into the marketplace.

When a small team of partners set out to create a revolutionary internet technology, their initial aim wasn’t to secure a network against spam, spyware, viruses and hackers, or to solve incompatible software issues.

“Those problems simply fell off along the way,” says Manabars Executive Chairperson Allan Rutledge.

In 2001, the team presented their first prototype engine of an entirely reconfigured microchip to Dr Kay Fielden, a lecturer in the School of Computing and Information Technology at Unitec.

Manabars was originally conceived as an information-trading platform, with an embedded, easy-to-generate system of payment to content providers.

Fielden then invented a membrane that allowed two pieces of software to pass information back and forth without passing references to each other. It was the breakthrough the group was looking

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“She took a look at it and said, ‘it’s so secure, it’s useless’,” says Rutledge.

for. “The software could communicate but couldn’t affect one another,” Rutledge says. “Hallelujah!”

SIX-YEAR INCUBATION Unitec offered the joint venture partnership office space and student researchers to incubate the Manabars Network. The hardware architecture is now patented and ready for the marketplace. The first application products – a spam-free email package and a web server that requires no hardware – have been pre-sold to a local technology company for $400,000.

Manabars employs 15 full-time staff.

Many of these are former Unitec students whose work for the project formed a core part of their computing studies. A small team has been recruited to work on aspects of the project in India, and a Unitec Master of Computing student is mathematically verifying the security of the network.

the new microchip contains all its parts within one membrane. Its security model is simplistic and intuitive. There’s just one single machine instruction that allows the system to get another set of references, which means the network can only look inwards. References can’t be written down or exchanged outside the system, so there’s no need for spam filters.

and carbon-credit trading platform are another off-shoot of the technology. The most exciting project at the moment is probably a joint development with a major international music company to create a new environment for trading music on the Internet. Piracy costs the music and movie industry billions of dollars per year.

ACCESS FROM ANY DEVICE

“Software can only affect itself,” explains Rutledge. “It’s like a fridge, which keeps the beers inside it cold, but can’t chill the whole room.”

TO THE MARKETPLACE

Manabars is a portal through which any free subscriber can access information – such as their email, documents, pictures and music – from any device, which eliminates the need to own computer hardware. A mobile phone will do just fine. The portal acts like a web browser except that it holds all personal files and applications on what’s called a “redundant and distributed” grid where each computer is a Node.

Because personal data is not held by a single server, even if a Node fails and one copy goes astray, the distributed nature of the grid means another immediately grows. “The network is self-healing, so information is not lost,” says Rutledge.

MOVE TO A PAID ECONOMY The Manabars economy builds in payment for anyone who posts information to the network. Embedded charging, says Rutledge, is a way of translating the old economy of payment for work into a new internet-based economy.

“At the moment there’s no reward mechanism for posting quality information on the Internet. The catch 22 has been that people don’t want to pay to access information on the web. As a result, websites are being supported by advertising. With embedded charging, everyone who generates an online service gets guaranteed royalties.”

All information on Manabars is free to view but can be charged for in what’s called computational credits.

Subscribers can generate as much as $200 a year by simply renting the idle capacity of their computers or other devices to Manabars. Content authors are paid in computational credits.

Anyone who has used the virtual game Second Life will understand the concept.

Computational credits can soon be converted to real money at an exchange hosted by Manabars.

Hard to get your head around? Take the Manabars team’s word for it; you don’t need to understand how the fridge works in order to drink the beer.

“The network is as complicated as a Boeing,” grins Rutledge, gesturing to the silent room of half a dozen employees busy in front of computer screens.

“That’s why the project has been so challenging. It’s been technically hard to build; complicated on the inside but simple to use on the outside.”

COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH Reinventing the wheel takes time. Every aspect, from the chip up, has had to be rebuilt. At this stage, however, the main focus of Manabars is software development. The front end, or what you see on the computer screen, isn’t quite ready yet and is being simulated in Java until June 2007.

The project has had a number of grants from the Foundation for Research, Science and Technology, including Technology Industry Fellowships to students working on the project. On the outside, the Manabars Joint Venture Partnership evolved in 2006 into Manabars Technologies Limited, with a board of directors chaired by Allan Rutledge and with Dr John Dunbar, General Manager of Cellnet New Zealand, as spokesperson.

EMERGING PRODUCTS

Computers run on either licensed software or open source. Recent examples of programs created through giving all programmers access to source code are the browser Mozilla Firefox and the Apache web server. Manabars intends to go one step further and simply be “open”. While the much-hyped web successes of 2006 – MySpace and YouTube – are every IT entrepreneur’s dream, Rutledge prefers to benchmark the Manabars Network against the likes of Google, which outperformed its competitors over the long haul.

“This is major technology, a full engineering solution with quite an outrageous architecture,” says Rutledge, “but the technical risks are mostly solved. We’re ready now to take on the marketing risks. Although we have over 150 investors in the company we are always looking for more as the number of potential products we could create is outstripping our available resources.”

Director John Dunbar joined the Manabars board because he saw the company’s potential to become a major force in the software world.

“The issues with spam, viruses, security and piracy are by far the biggest problems confronting the Internet today,” Dunbar says. “The company that can come up with even a partial solution would be extremely valuable indeed.”

CONTACT Allan Rutledge Executive Chairperson, Manabars email allan@manabars.com

This year, the student side of the project is branching out to collaborate with other institutions such as AUT University, Massey University, Manukau Institute of Technology, NorthTec and the New Zealand Management Academy. Marketing and graphic design are also required as Manabars heads out of academia and into the commercial marketplace.

BUILT ON SET THEORY The network is based on mathematical set theory. Instead of having a central processing unit (CPU) that holds a number of cores and is attached to memory chips by a rather vulnerable bus,

An application is being developed that allows mobile phone users to take an unlimited number of photos and videos without increasing the memory on their phone. Plans for an energy

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ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE

Surf, sand and science at Raglan New Zealand’s coastline has a greater range of beach and near-shore environments than anywhere else in the world. Yet scientific measurement of the interaction between natural forces of change and human intervention on our coasts is significantly lacking. Unitec lecturer Dr David Phillips is focusing on Raglan to track the migration of a voluminous sand bar.

The Raglan headland in 2006, with wave patterning returning to normal as the giant sand slug moved east.

Raglan, two hours south of Auckland, is situated on a large headland that is famous for its surfing. Consistent, peeling waves break along the length of the headland from Ruapuke Beach to the Raglan Harbour entrance.

In 2004, a series of storms led to radically altered wave breaks. Wave quality returned the following winter but in December 2005, a large sandbar, or “slug” was sighted adjacent to the headland, containing as much as one million cubic metres of sand.

FILLING A KNOWLEDGE VOID Dr David Phillips, a senior lecturer in Unitec’s School of The Built Environment, had previously investigated sediment transport and seabed characteristics at the Raglan headland for his PhD. This new phenomenon gave Phillips the opportunity to once again put on a wetsuit to identify the slug’s effect on surfing wave quality and the delicate ecological balance of the coastline.

The results are of keen interest not only to surfers and scientists, but could also reframe decisions made by engineers designing shoreline protection systems; local iwi as kaitiaki of the seabed and foreshore; sand mining prospectors and those who oppose the practice; local councils regulating residential development along the west coast; and coastal protection agencies selecting marine reserves.

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SAND MINING AND EROSION The prospecting stages of mining are not covered by the Resource Management Act (RMA) 1991.

“You can get a licence for this without recourse to the RMA, which means you don’t need to consult with affected communities beforehand,” says Phillips. “This anomaly in the act has fast-tracked companies prospecting for iron sand and other minerals. A proposal for a blanket mining project for all the dune land up to five kilometres inland, from below New Plymouth to the Manukau, is being considered by the Ministry of Economic Development.

We need a lot more knowledge than we currently have to direct informed decision making.”

Other factors driving a focus on the west coast, Phillips says, are increased subdivisions along the coast and significant erosion in places such as Mokau, Raglan, Kariotahe and Muriwai beaches.

TRACKING THE MIGRATION Phillips’ report, “Investigation of the Temporal and Spatial Change of a Large Sandbar at Raglan, New Zealand”, was jointly funded by Unitec and Amalgamates Solutions and Research Ltd (ASR), industry experts in professional marine consulting and research. Dr Shaw Mead, director of ASR, worked with Phillips on a

number of bathymetric surveys of the seabed. The headland was computer modelled, driven by wave data from the World-Wide Wave model, and the study validated with aerial photos. The results confirmed that the sandbar had indeed compromised surfing wave quality by altering the breaking pattern of waves at the headland and reducing their height.

Research shows that large sand influxes occur in the lagoon every 20 to 30 years, the last being in 1985. By March 2006, the slug was migrating east and had reduced in size. Three months later, it was barely discernible.

“A historical pattern and a period of very large swell on the west coast, rather than current climate change indicators, appear to be the cause,” says Phillips.

“But what’s exciting is that this slug differs from any previously documented examples in the world literature because it’s migrating as a single body.

This is new science.”

Phillips’ and Mead’s findings are being published this year in the USA-based Journal of Coastal Research.

CONTACT Dr David Phillips Senior Lecturer School of The Built Environment email dphillips@unitec.ac.nz

IN THE LIMELIGHT

Reviving the career of a crime queen Academic and accessible are two words seldom used together. Unitec School of Design lecturer Dr Jo Drayton intends to alter that perception with a biography as gripping as the murder mysteries her subject wrote half a century ago.

Murder made her an international best-selling author, and she was one of the leading lights in New Zealand’s art world, yet Ngaio Marsh retains a low profile. A Unitec academic is hoping to change that.

Dr Jo Drayton is this year’s prestigious Alexander Turnbull National Library Fellow, and will be researching the life of writer Dame Ngaio Marsh.

The $45,000 fellowship, based at the library in Wellington, aims to encourage scholars to use its collections and produce publications based on them.

A QUEEN OF CRIME Marsh was one of four “Queens of Crime” of the period, along with Agatha Christie, Margery Allingham and Dorothy Sayers. One million copies of her murder mysteries were shipped worldwide in 1949 alone. Despite such unprecedented international success Marsh has not, Drayton says, been accorded the place in New Zealand history she deserves.

The first of her 32 novels, Death in a White Tie and Artists in Crime were published in London and New York in 1938. Marsh continued to be published throughout the Second World War and right up until she died at age 87. Marsh also wrote short fiction, plays, essays, articles and non-fiction.

WALKING IN MARSH’S FOOTSTEPS Drayton, who lectures on design theory and 19th and 20th century art history, shares much common ground with Marsh, as the author of three highly regarded biographies of New Zealand painters: Edith Collier: Her Life and Work, 1885-1964; Rhona Haszard: An experimental expatriate New Zealand artist; and Frances Hodgkins – a private viewing.

Drayton first met Marsh in a Christchurch theatre as a 10-year-old, but it was only

later, through the connection with art and interior design, that her academic interests were piqued.

“I had already extensively researched this period in my previous books and wanted to take on a project that would stretch me as a writer,” she says.

“Marsh made her life sound rather dull and uninteresting, probably to avoid attention. In reality she was a lively, funny person with a deep booming voice that makes Helen Clark sound like a soprano by comparison.”

Harper Collins will publish Drayton’s biography of Dame Ngaio Marsh in 2008.

CONTACT Dr Jo Drayton Lecturer School of Design email jdrayton@unitec.ac.nz

“There’s not enough awareness of her here today. My ambition is to write a rigorously researched book that will reach a wide audience and illuminate a rather complex and elusive woman who was larger than life during her life.”

The greatest challenge in researching Marsh’s life is that all extant material has been vetted by Marsh or her friends.

“She was a crime writer so she knew exactly what evidence to get rid of,” says Drayton. “The mystery extends to her own life.”

Just who the well-travelled spinster and owner of a Jaguar sports car really was may remain speculative to a degree but, as Drayton says, “I’ll be raising questions about her life that nobody’s yet asked”.

MARSH’S BIOGRAPHY Marsh (1895-1982) was the daughter of a Christchurch bank clerk who left England after his upper class family fell on hard times. His daughter first gained recognition in the 1920s as a modernist painter. She was also an acclaimed Shakespearean director and interior designer who lived for 77 years in her family home.

Dr Jo Drayton, the 2007 Alexander Turnbull National Library Fellow.

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NEWS IN BRIEF

New head of Business School

Dr Toni Hilton has been appointed as Head of the Unitec Business School.

Hilton came to New Zealand from the UK in 2005 to take up a head of department role at AUT, but says the Unitec Business School position was an opportunity too good to pass up.

“I believe employers want business graduates who can balance disciplinebased knowledge with generic skills, such as the ability to work in a group environment and communicate effectively. The dynamism of the business world places huge demands on business organisations and it is important that our graduates are able to contribute from day one.“ Originally graduating with a law degree, Hilton pursued a marketing career in the UK and Europe’s fast-moving consumer goods sector in the 1980s.

She joined the University of West England’s Bristol Business School as a senior lecturer in marketing in 1991, before becoming principal lecturer and Head of the School of Marketing. Hilton is still a visiting fellow at the university.

Cup boatbuilder gets honorary degree One of the world’s best high-performance yacht builders was recognised for his contribution to the discipline with an honorary degree at Unitec New Zealand’s recent graduation.

“Mick is one of the best, if not the best, builder of composite racing yachts in the world. It required a unique person like Mick to blaze a trail in the industry and he’s someone our students can follow.”

Mick Cookson of Cookson Boats has built some of the world’s fastest yachts, working on boats used in five America’s Cup campaigns – including the 2000 cup winners, NZL 57 and 60.

Cookson says the honorary degree came as a total surprise. “It’s an honour.

I don’t take it lightly, and it’s good for the apprentices at work and for my kids to see.”

Cookson received an honorary Bachelor of Applied Technology at the Unitec graduation ceremony in April.

He says the industry offers a world of opportunities for those willing to do the work.

The Head of Marine Technology at Unitec, Rob Shaw, says that Cookson was an obvious choice for the innovative degree.

“At the end of the day, as with anything in life, it’s what an individual puts in that dictates what they get out.”

Pacific centre community led

Turbulent art

A centre that aims to increase Pacific participation and student success rates is focusing on the community’s needs, says its new Head, Linda Aumua.

Aumua was appointed as the Head of the Centre for Pacific Development and Support after 20 years of involvement in Pacific education.

Dr Regan Potangaroa lectures in architectural engineering at Unitec and

The third Auckland Triennial is New Zealand’s premier art exhibition, featuring 34 exhibitors from around the globe.

She says her job is primarily to engage the Pacific communities in tertiary education.

“We need to listen to, and be led by, the needs of the community and develop initiatives that meet those needs, rather than telling them what they should do.”

With more than 10 years in Pacific support and development roles at Unitec, Aumua has been involved in a range of initiatives.

She was instrumental in developing a foundation course for Pacific Police recruits to help them prepare for the Police entrance exam with an 80 percent success rate.

Medal for disaster relief worker A disaster relief worker has been recognised for his work in areas devastated by the Boxing Day tsunamis with a service medal from the New Zealand Government.

Innovative art by two design lecturers has been featured alongside work by some of the world’s leading contemporary artists at a prestigious international exhibition.

is a member of RedR, a humanitarian organisation that sends technically skilled people to disaster zones to help the UN. He worked extensively in regions hit by the 2004 tsunamis and says that he didn’t know until recently he was eligible for the medal.

Potangaroa – who has been everywhere with the UN, from Darfur to Afghanistan – has carried out research looking at the quality of life of disaster victims to help prioritise and focus relief programmes. He says many of the areas hit by the tsunamis are now bouncing back from the disaster.

“The infrastructure takes a long time to rebuild, but my research shows that the people are very resilient.”

Ki Mua Ki Muri (pictured) by School of Design jewellery lecturer Areta Wilkinson and Liliu by painting lecturer Julian Hooper were chosen to be included in the international arts event.

The Auckland Triennial was established in 2000 and this year’s theme is Turbulence. Wilkinson is the first artist from a craft-based tradition to ever have work included. Linda Tyler, Manager of the Gus Fisher Gallery where Hooper and Wilkinson’s work was displayed, says that selection alongside artists who have such high international profiles is a significant accolade.

“You can have a national reputation but it’s a major step up to exhibit in a triennial. A lot of high-profile curators and art world people do the Asia Pacific circuit of biennials and triennials. The exposure Areta and Julian are getting is huge.”

For more information about any of these news items, please contact Unitec’s Media Manager on +64 9 815 4321 ext 7601 or email slambert@unitec.ac.nz

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