Advance - Winter 2010

Advance

u n i t e c

r e s e a r c h

m a g a z i n e

W I N T E R

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Taking Tonga’s pulse How entrepreneurs in Tonga stack up globally – p6

Science and art Conversations that put big questions into context – p8

A folding whare New portable hut design reinvigorates traditional principles – p12

In the limelight Dr Jodi Salinsky’s evolution as an exotic animal vet – p14

Editorial

As mentioned in this column last year, work has been proceeding on a research strategy that captures the unique contribution of our activity as apart from that conducted by Crown Research Institutes, universities, and other research organisations. This has resulted in a vision for research that “focuses on practically oriented and applied research that has an impact on and adds value to our stakeholders and our community.”

So what does that mean? It means a bias toward research that is both driven by the potential to solve and address realworld problems and which can be utilised towards those ends, perhaps more directly than other approaches.

editor Jade Reidy sub-editor Claudia Mischke design Brigitte Smits cover image Richard Leonard printing Norcross Group of Companies Advance is published by Unitec New Zealand ISSN 1176-7391 phone 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.

RESEARCHFEATURE IN BRIEF

In Advance we profile a selection of the research projects undertaken by staff and students at Unitec and attempt to capture something of the unique flavour of our research activity.

Challenging traditional academic boundaries opens new insights.

Nowhere is this more evident than in the range of cross- and multidisciplinary collaborations engaged in by some of our researchers. Thus, in this issue we feature art/science collaborations that combine health sciences, natural sciences, and landscape architecture. In our feature on e-government we see the coming together of computing and community development. We also canvass the diversity of Unitec research by profiling contributions in areas of management studies, construction and engineering, architecture, natural sciences, performing and screen arts, and communications.

‘Impact’ is a key element, which suggests that the research should result in some identifiable positive change and benefits for those that it serves. That is to say, research has impact when it leads to outcomes such as improved policy, technologies, products or processes, or other benefits such as improvements in wellbeing or more general social or cultural contributions. The final part of the vision statement reinforces this and draws our attention to those whom our work serves. Unitec is strongly embedded in its local community and region, and acknowledges its responsibilities to its many stakeholders, including students, staff, alumni, and prioritises its research activity with these groups in mind.

I hope you enjoy this issue of Advance and welcome any feedback you may wish to provide.

Programme inspires future school principals to aspire

Taking theatre to the cleaners

The role of school principal has become less attractive in recent years, despite the pivotal influence principals exert on every aspect of a school’s effectiveness.

Aside from stress and burn-out, a key factor is lack of adequate preparation for the role.

A highlight of this year’s Wellington Fringe Festival was the premiere of a theatre performance devised by Unitec’s LAB: Research Theatre Company.

In 2008, the Ministry of Education launched a four-stage National Aspiring Principals pilot professional development project and then awarded Unitec the contract to evaluate stage one. Associate Professor Eileen Piggot-Irvine and Howard Youngs found that, while initial reactions cannot measure the sustained effects of change, the programme is ‘so-far-so-good’ on numerous indicators.

Of the 180 primary or secondary teachers who signed up, 26 gained principalship either during or directly after the programme, say the researchers, and the increase in confidence was widespread.

Unanticipated results were that primary teachers found the training most relevant and those teachers who had already completed a postgraduate leadership qualification were less satisfied, raising the issue of how one programme can meet a wide range of needs.

Eileen has directed ten national evaluation contracts in the last five years.

CONTACT Associate Professor Eileen Piggot-Irvine Director NZ Action Research and Review Centre Dept of Education Faculty of Social & Health Sciences Email: epiggotirvine@unitec.ac.nz

Alfonsina is a young Argentinean woman who has migrated from Buenos Aires to Auckland in search of a better life.

She finds a job as a cleaner and the play uses comedic devices to reveal the paradoxes inherent in the experience of immigration, among them friendship, hardship and loyalty.

Grieving animals put to the test system functioning and cortisol levels.

The study will also establish any key behaviours associated with emotional loss, and help inform pet owners about ideal care for their companions.

CONTACT Dr Simon Peel Dean, Research Email: speel@unitec.ac.nz

Sonja paine master of Business

The stage one report “What made it work?” is underpinned by an extensive knowledge of international theory and practice, and the full results will be published in the Education Management and Leadership Journal.

Described by Theatreview as “fluid ensemble work and impeccable timing”, Alfonsina set out to do more than just wow the audience and critics with an original work. Its purpose is to research acting methodologies. Set up

by Pedro Ilgenfritz, lecturer in Theatre Theory and Acting, this permanent group of actors is focusing the four 2010 performances of Alfonsina on analysing the audience’s responses to the challenges of immigration.

Do animals experience grief? The answer is, we don’t know for certain because the question hasn’t been scientifically investigated until now.

Unitec natural sciences lecturer Jessica Walker is in the early stages of a PhD that will focus mainly on grief in cats, dogs and farm animals. While Unitec is building a new research laboratory, Jessica is approaching potential lab partners in developing a range of tests to measure physiological changes indicative of stress, such as immune

Exploring the degree to which companion animals suffer grief is complicated by the ethical demands of not deliberately inducing a grief situation. The research has to be opportunistic, so Jessica is also looking for pet owners willing to take part. The PhD will be supervised by Professor Natalie Waran and aspects of the research will take place at the University of Queensland’s animal facilities, where she’ll be co-supervised by Professor Clive Phillips, and have assistance from several veterinary interns from France.

The findings will offer first steps in a field that, as Jessica sees it, is still wide open for speculation.

CONTACT Jessica Walker Lecturer Dept of Natural Sciences Faculty of Social & Health Sciences Email: jwalker@unitec.ac.nz

The play will be performed in Florianopolis, Brazil, in July at the Vertice Festival of Women in Theatre, as well as in Auckland and Dunedin.

Pedro is hoping to gauge the extent to which theatre can provoke the sociocultural and political debates inherent in personal experience, so after each performance a focus group is being invited to discuss their responses. These focus groups range from Latin American immigrants to theatre students, cleaners and Brazilians who have lived in other countries.

CONTACT Pedro Ilgenfritz Lecturer Dept of Performing & Screen Arts Faculty of Creative Industries & Business Email: pilgenfritz@unitec.ac.nz

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RESEARCH IN BRIEF

Leadership for consultant radiographers Radiation technologists are looking to reduce their reliance on the medical profession for leadership, to become more autonomous. Unitec is at the cutting edge worldwide of leadership research with 16 of the 26 consultant radiographers in the UK, the top tier within the profession.

FEATURE computing & community development

Landscape leads the design While a design competition for Auckland’s Queen’s Wharf has been scrapped, a team of Unitec landscape architecture lecturers has transformed its proposed design (pictured) for the Rugby World Cup ‘party central’ into a teaching resource for students.

Associate Professor Suzanne Henwood is driving a complex project to identify and fill any gaps in the requisite leadership skills for the job. Clinical expertise is a given, says Suzanne, but leadership and teaching skills are also needed and many practitioners don’t have the background.

Consultants will first be measured using the National Health Services’ Leadership Quality Framework, instigated three years ago. The next stage involves interviews with consultants about their historical career paths and perceived ability to lead. Action learning groups will be formed for ongoing peer support and one-to-one leadership coaching offered. At the end of one year their attitudes and competencies will be reassessed.

While New Zealand has only three tiers of roles, lacking consultants as yet, it is likely that we will follow in the UK’s footsteps and results of this research will offer the profession here a head start in positioning effective new leaders.

CONTACT Associate Professor Suzanne Henwood Dept of Medical Imaging Faculty of Social & Health Sciences Email: shenwood@unitec.ac.nz

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In 1997, the first website to provide information about local government in New Zealand went online. 13 years later, research by Unitec confirms that councils are struggling to meet the Government’s digital strategy goals and to provide truly democratic local e-government.

Of the 237 competition entries, the consortium made it to the final five and their entry was judged by an advisory panel of industry experts to be a realistic balance of needs, particularly given the timeframe involved and the budget available.

Pete Griffiths, Den Aitken and Dr Hamish Foote, partners of Field Landscape Architecture, formed a consortium in 2009 to enter the design competition for Queen’s Wharf.

The consortium included Downer Construction, and Cheshire and Peddle Thorp architects. Led by landscape architecture rather than architecture, the consortium inverted the normal power structure. Architects, says Den, are used to controlling the space and tend to be less finely tuned to issues such as ecology.

Closing the local government digital divide In 2004, the Government launched a digital strategy aimed at providing equitable access for all New Zealanders to participate in an information society.

The strategy set targets for local governments to meet by 2010. Professor Kay Fielden of Unitec’s Department of Computing and Pam Malcolm, Head of the Department of Community Studies, have published the results of a collaborative study that reveals vastly disparate e-readiness amongst the country’s 85 councils.

The entry has been on display at Unitec’s Snowhite Gallery as part of an exhibition called Transparent – Landscape Drawing that demonstrates the design process involved in largescale urban site redevelopment.

but none had met the minimum service standards set for 2007.

Online participation in government was still in its infancy, with only nine councils even surveying their residents about website design. Most had not moved beyond using organisation-specific jargon and organising their sites from an internal point of view. Regional councils particularly lagged behind on targets, “perhaps because they have fewer dealings with people on a day-today basis,” says Kay.

CONTACT Den Aitken Lecturer Dept of Landscape Architecture Faculty of Creative Industries & Business Email: daitken@unitec.ac.nz

Associate Professor Evangelia Papoutsaki of Unitec’s Department of Communication Studies is acting as research chief investigator for a twoyear project that will explore visual and community action approaches to help combat the confusion. Oral cultures predominate in PNG and one of the aims of Komuniti Tok Piksa, she says, is to incorporate local narratives and indigenous knowledge into researching and designing strategies specific to the country. Emotional engagement and the space for dialogue within communities encourage them to draw on their own resources and take ownership of formulating local messages.

Funded by the PNG National Aids Council and AusAID, and in partnership with Sydney’s University of Technology, the project will be based at the University of Goroka in the Highlands region. Its initial focus is to produce video material and an accompanying facilitators’ guide that can be used directly in raising awareness. The longer term goal of employing an indigenous framework for the research is to build local research capacity.

Evangelia is also co-editing a book on communication and development with Papua New Guinean colleagues.

CONTACT Associate Professor Evangelia Papoutsaki Dept of Communication Studies Faculty of Creative Industries & Business Email: epapoutsaki@unitec.ac.nz

REVISED TARGETS TO 2020 The Government has now pushed out digital strategy targets to 2020, to take advantage of the democratic potential of social networking, through blogging and other interactive tools such as Twitter that give residents access to more immediate conversations with their councils. Use of such tools is currently weak.

“Most sites provided downloadable pdf forms for submissions,” says Kay, “which only extends existing models of consultation. There was no online voting on any issues or blogs providing open access to council processes.”

Visual dialogues generate new HIV strategies In Papua New Guinea, HIV/AIDS is now considered to be a generalised epidemic. Around three out of every four new infections occur in rural areas where misinformation about the virus is still widespread and coordinated strategies lacking.

“We know from previous studies that website design creates barriers for older users and that access to the internet is inequitable,” says Pam. “Online literacy requires not only the basic infrastructure but also a set of skills shaped and reinforced by those with power. We believe that the push to provide 24/7 seamless internet access is broadening, rather than closing, the digital divide.”

Palmerston North is a great example of a small council with a rich media capability. This was confirmed by a website award in 2009 from the Association for Local Government Information Management.

PROGRESS ON TARGETS

WHO PAYS THE PRICE

By 2010, online participation was set to become the norm with the internet as the main platform, rather than an additional tool, for proactively delivering services.

While cost benefits are often cited in the push towards e-government, UK studies have shown that digital engagement comes at a cost for users and shifts the responsibility onto residents. The last census in New Zealand showed that around 80,000 people live in a household without a phone and therefore no internet connection.

“The Government intended the internet to have transformed the way councils operate,” says Kay, “yet few local governments have had any formal strategies to build e-government services, let alone the readiness to begin delivering them.”

A snapshot of the country’s city, district and regional councils, taken mid-2009, showed that all local governments had partially met the 2004 targets for online transactions

Kay and Pam’s study looked at the implications of the push towards e-government through hypothetical case studies of four marginalised groups: intellectually disabled, mentally disabled, the homeless and the elderly. Together, these groups may constitute as much as 20 percent of the country’s population.

Use of technologies has multiple and paradoxical effects, says Pam. “There’s no quick fix, but we believe that councils need to actively extend themselves to those who are socially and digitally marginalised, to gain their voice in designing a local government environment that’s genuinely inclusive.”

“E-government in New Zealand” is being published in Comparative E-government: An Examination of E-government across Countries by Springer Integrated Series in Information Systems. The researchers intend disseminating their results to local government policy makers.

CONTACT Pam Malcolm Head of Department Community Development Faculty of Social & Health Sciences Email: pmalcolm@unitec.ac.nz

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management FEATURE

management

Taking Tonga’s entrepreneurial pulse

SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURS For the first time, this year’s GEM data includes social entrepreneurs, those whose activities have a social goal, whether profit or non-profit oriented.

The areas in which social entrepreneurs work vary widely, from education to economic development but the common element in factor-driven economies such as Tonga is provision of basic services such as health, sanitation and fresh water. This contrasts with wealthier innovation-driven countries, whose social entrepreneurs tend to focus on recycling, environmental protection and providing services for people with disabilities.

For the first time, a Pacific nation has been included in the global monitoring project on entrepreneurship. Unitec’s GEM Pacific team is now reporting back to Tonga’s government and diaspora community a raft of findings about entrepreneurial activity and how best to support it.

Fear of failure is justifiable, given the evidence that the Pacific kingdom ranks ahead of only Russia and South Africa in its ability to sustain businesses beyond three and a half years. Competition is one factor. Most retail businesses are now Asian owned and they have collective bargaining power and a stronger business culture, says Malama.

“In a small island nation that’s status conscious, who you know can also make the difference between a perceived gap in the market for a good idea, and the success of that idea.”

The Unitec presentation of GEM findings on Tonga’s entrepreneurs from left to right: David Coltman, Asoka Gunaratne, Stephen Cox, Judith King, Malia Talakai, Habbon Hynie (ex-Tongan government employee), Malama Solomona, Bonita Maywald (AusAID) and Robert Davis.

Many highly successful companies are born in times of economic malaise.

The iconic Fisher & Paykel partnership started up in 1934 amidst the Great Depression, and 2Degrees mobile hit the market last year. Recessions open up opportunities as consumers shift their buying habits, governments reassess regulations and competitors go under.

Some entrepreneurs are driven to dust off that good idea after losing their jobs.

BREAKING THE CYCLE

Necessity is the mother-of-invention in Tonga, where over half of those who participated in Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) research last year see increased opportunities for starting up a business in the global economic downturn.

GEM has been ranking countries for the past 12 years, to better understand the relationship between entrepreneurship and national economic development, and Unitec has represented GEM New Zealand since 2001. Amongst the 55 countries surveyed in 2009 Tonga ranked 10th overall for early stage entrepreneurial activity. Every country has factors that constrain and promote new businesses. While Tongans widely embrace the idea of being self-employed, fear of failure puts the brakes on getting started. With almost 65 percent of the 1,200 people surveyed being afraid to fail, Tonga took out the global number one place ahead of Malaysia.

“For Tongans, entrepreneurship is a means of survival,” says GEM Pacific team co-leader Malama Solomona.

“While New Zealanders primarily choose it as a lifestyle, Tongan people reach for self-employment as a lifeline.

Especially in hard times when the amount of money being repatriated back to Tonga drops.”

Factors such as culture and lack of institutional support underlie this constraint, says Malama. “Tonga is a collective society. A typical business is owner operated and looks to the family for its main support, rather than the government or a bank, creating reciprocal financial obligations that can undermine a business’ capacity to grow.”

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The researchers in Tonga found an overlap between two spheres of activity, with a number of businesses being started to meet a social goal by individuals who needed to make a living

BUILDING BETTER CAPACITY

RECOMMENDATIONS INTO ACTION

While governments in developed countries look to entrepreneurs to stimulate job creation in uncertain economic times, new businesses in developing countries tend to be extractive – farming, fishing, forestry and mining – with minimal growth prospects. Tonga fits this profile, with agriculture being the leading sector and stagnant export production. Economic growth is sitting at around one percent.

The research was supported by Unitec’s Research Office and Postgraduate Centre and the Australian Agency for International Development (AusAID), which supports Pacific countries to strengthen their business-enabling environment through agencies such as the Asian Development Bank and International Finance Corporation.

Following a presentation at Unitec to the Tongan community in February, the six-member Unitec GEM Pacific team is taking the findings to Tonga to discuss them with the government and the University of the South Pacific. It

The GEM data suggests countries with strict employment protection regulations have fewer entrepreneurs who have a high potential to create jobs. In Tonga, the primary constraint is the stringent regulations for business start-up and activities, which deter experienced people from quitting their job and helping to build new businesses. From interviewing local experts, GEM researchers identified a comprehensive range of other changes needed to support the optimistic entrepreneurial nature of Tongans, from enforcing intellectual property rights to introducing business studies into schools from primary level.

Associate Professor Robert Davis, co-leader of the GEM team, sees an opportunity to develop an enterprise in schools curriculum for the Pacific, leveraging the work Unitec’s Department of Management and Marketing has put into creating the NCEA curriculum in New Zealand and with the Young Enterprise Trust, which starts at primary school level.

Savelina Vehikite dancing a traditional Tongan dance following the formal presentations.

“The World Bank is of the same mind, that education in schools is a priority,” says Robert. “We would need to develop a model appropriate to Tonga’s collective context, rather than one that’s individually oriented.”

is often difficult for small island states to reflect and act on the wide range of research recommendations about their country but the team is well informed about the work already being carried out in Tonga by various multi-lateral agencies, including progress on meeting its Millennium Development Goals for 2015. “We didn’t go in blind, thinking we had all the answers,” says Robert.

“We’re ensuring our objectives match those of Tonga.”

VANUATU IS NEXT The GEM Pacific team is now focusing on researching a second Pacific location, Vanuatu, with a survey of around 1,200 households and local experts across the country’s 83 islands.

Given its different history and evolution to that of Tonga, the results may reveal key differences. One business already in development is organic beef, leveraging wandering cattle on Tanna Island.

The team intends to return to Tonga in 2011 for the next survey, and will focus on transferring knowledge, to begin building capacity within each Pacific country to undertake its own data collection in future years.

CONTACT Associate Professor Robert Davis Head, Department of Management & Marketing Faculty of Creative Industries & Business Email: rdavis@unitec.ac.nz

Dealing with fear of failure • Improve opportunities to start up businesses • Improve knowledge and abilities on how to start up and establish businesses • Improve alignment of cultural and social attitudes to entrepreneurship • Increase training and business mentoring

A stall holder selling handcrafts in at the Fish Market in Vava’u. Photo: Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade.

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science and art

science and art

What art can achieve with science Art and science collaborations are an emerging field of research practice. While some fall short of true engagement, says Dr Craig Hilton, art has a unique opportunity to address the challenges facing science.

“Science is having a stressful time in the public arena, struggling for example to convince us about climate change or that biotechnology can be positive,” says Dr Craig Hilton, programme director of Unitec’s Master of Osteopathy.

“People confuse science with technology and capitalism, given that funding priorities have driven most scientists into producing technology, but science is a system of thought rather than a collection of objects. Many forms of artistic expression have been made possible by science and what artists can do is think laterally about technology, humanise it with subjective gut feeling, and help create an environment for more informed public debate.”

Craig conceived one of three collaborations taking place between Unitec artists and scientists. His work, “The Immortalisation of Billy Apple®”, centres on growing an immortal cell line, taken from the artist Billy Apple®’s biological tissue, for use in cancer research and art projects. “Fallen” (see page 10) is the focus of John Pusateri’s collaboration with natural sciences lecturers to visually document scientific specimens and add to local knowledge of biodiversity. Dr Hamish Foote’s “The Face of Nature” (see page 11) is a series of portraits of European colonial explorers depicting the natural worlds they discovered in 19th century New Zealand and their European roots.

in depicting salvation, and the viewer became integrated into the viewed.

Where donors of religious paintings had had themselves painted discreetly into corners of paintings they began to insist on sharing centre stage with God, and replacing him. Humanism had arrived.

As art, morals and science began to differentiate from the Christian Church’s hegemony over all thought they dissociated. Art separated from craft. The painter was no longer a craftsman and member of a guild.

Just as the image lost its purpose in creating magic and instilling hopes of eternity, so artists lost their role as pillars of society, constructive critics and servants of power. The image became abstracted – Cubist, Surrealist, Expressionist. Into that void of meaning stepped pop art, an explosion of neon commercialism; a blurring of the boundaries between life and art, the artist as his own art work.

In 1962, a New Zealander called Barrie Bates found himself in New York in the midst of the pop art explosion, an artist in the company of its foremost exponents. He changed his name to Billy Apple and created a brand, symbolically immortalising himself. Himself as the subject of art became the basis for nearly five decades of conceptual art work and international renown, culminating in 2008 when he registered Billy Apple® as a trademark.

Focusing on both art and science, Dr Craig Hilton studied first biochemistry then fine arts, undertaking biomedical research at Otago and the medical schools of Harvard and Massachusetts universities. When looking for a person to immortalise in a way that had genuinely valuable scientific and artistic outputs, Billy was the obvious candidate.

Science moved from its careful recording of detail into investigating the very processes of life itself. With an explosion of knowledge and new equipment scientists began unpicking many of the mysteries that had governed our lives but continually finding new questions. Each sphere became increasingly specialised and polarised, with its own language that often failed to communicate with the general public and each other.

RENAISSANCE ROOTS

FINDING NEW PURPOSE

The movement referred to as the Renaissance arguably laid the foundations for empirical science and modern art in the West. Many of the leading figures of the 15th and 16th centuries, such as Leonardo da Vinci and Albrecht Dürer, were both scientists and artists. Ideas from one sphere flowed into and fed the other.

Both spheres are being challenged. How can art, now viewed as elitist, become both useful and relevant to a world increasingly governed by technology?

How can science communicate the rapid developments in such areas as biotechnology to stimulate intelligent public debate rather than fuel irrational fears and defences? And the bigger question, how can art and science collaborate to restore human beings to our integral yet insignificant place in the turning of the universe, no longer playing a God-like role in dominating and destructively altering the biosphere on which we depend.

Meticulous anatomical observations and advances, such as an understanding of vanishing points, led to a technical breakthrough in painting a perfect image of the tangible world. The image was freed from its metaphysical role

IMMORTALISING BILLY APPLE®

Above: Fluorescent microscopic images of HeLa cells. The HeLa line is one of the best-known cell lines in the world, derived in 1951 from an adenocarcinoma of the cervix found in Henrietta Lacks. HeLa cells were the first human cells to survive indefinitely in the laboratory. They reproduce an entire generation about every 24 hours.

“The project had instant appeal to him,” says Craig. At a University of Auckland laboratory, the B-lymphocyte cells were isolated from a small amount of Billy’s blood and grown in cell culture that mimicked their normal environmental conditions. A virus was introduced into the cell culture that, over months, transformed it into an immortalised cell line.

Most primary cell cultures have a limited life span, dividing a finite number of times before having an ageing crisis.

Cells that survive this crisis are referred to as a cell line. They can proliferate indefinitely.

Billy Apple bleaching with Lady Clairol Instant Crême Whip, November 1962 Photo: Richard Smith

“We all strive to leave something of ourselves behind when we die,” says Craig. “Billy has no children so I’ve given him a ‘child’ that will outlive him. His reproductive potential is unlimited. If you think of his cell line as an art work then you have a literal immortalisation, with science providing the ultimate success of the Billy Apple® brand.”

BILLY TAKES A RANDOM WALK

Billy Apple® looking at the new Billy Apple® cell line, School of Biological Sciences, University of Auckland, December 2009 Photo: Mary Morrison

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Left: Artist Billy Apple® discussing his cell line ‘immortalisation’ at Gala Café in Mt Eden with Unitec researcher Dr Craig Hilton.

But how could art serve science?

Immortalised cell lines have cancerlike properties, and Craig is facilitating their use in solving an immunological puzzle. Associate Professor Rod Dunbar directs a centre for biomedicine and biotechnology at the University of Auckland, which generated the cell line.

His focus is on developing a new vaccine for melanoma. For every invading virus or tumour there are a few rare T-cells among a diverse array that can sense it. These T-cells need to meet the specialised cells that have picked up the virus so they can activate, amass and defend their host.

“The assumption until now was that these rare cells are actively attracted to one another during an infection or tumour growth but new evidence suggests that immune cells simply wander around the spaces where they usually gather until the right cells happen to bump into each other,” says Craig. “That such a random walk is the actual basis for efficient immune responses is improbable.”

Billy Apple®’s cells will be taking a random walk amongst other cells in a simulated lymph node and observed for answers to this immunology conundrum. Dunbar is also purifying cancer molecules identified by T-cells then growing them among other cells so they can be re-introduced into patients via a formulated vaccine, to enhance T-cell responses to cancer cells. Billy’s B-cell line will be used as feeder cells to stimulate this growth.

ETHICS AND MORE APPLES Other science laboratories are already interested in Billy Apple®’s cells.

When the first immortal cell line was generated in 1951 in the USA, the cancer patient from whom tissue was taken was not informed. Sixty years later, Henrietta Lacks’ tissue has yielded about 50 million tonnes of HeLa cells and 300 HeLa studies are added each month to a library of 60,000 studies. Billy Apple® has given written consent for his tissue and genetic information to be used in research. The cell line will eventually be lodged with the American Type Culture Collection. Craig is working on other art projects to extend these initial experiments, including an exhibition at the Starkwhite Gallery in Auckland and a potential international show in 2011.

The project feeds directly back into student outcomes. “The methods we use to teach medicine and healthcare need to keep pace with advances in science and technology,” he says.

“While healthcare professionals don’t have to understand all the research that underpins how we design our courses or the way they practice, they do need to be well-equipped to help those they care for to understand, rather than fear, modern healthcare practices.”

CONTACT Dr Craig Hilton Programme Director Dept of Osteopathy Faculty of Social & Health Sciences Email: chilton@unitec.ac.nz

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science and art

science and art

Fallen

THE FACE OF NATURE

Some of the early transformations Europeans enacted on the New Zealand landscape have had unintended consequences. When an environmental agency makes management plans for open spaces in which natives and invasive exotics compete, those plans need to consider the impact of further changes to the way the ecosystem has adapted at both its visible and invisible layers. To gauge potential effects requires first knowing what lives there.

That knowledge became the practical result of a collaboration between Unitec architecture lecturer John Pusateri and two natural sciences senior lecturers, Dan Blanchon and Mel Galbraith.

Almost all civilisations have been obsessed with the possible relationship between immortality and the image.

Until the Renaissance the self in Western art was denied, ego being equated with the sin of arrogance, but once human beings became painted in equal stature to God the individual was set loose into realms previously considered divine, i.e. to create, invent and transform.

Collection one and Collection two archival pigment prints on paper, 378x457mm, 2007

HISTORICAL PORTRAITS It all began back in 2006 when John started collecting and documenting invertebrates alone in his own garden.

“My garden was the basis for a project called ‘Quiet’ but then I began to ask myself how this passion could become scientifically valuable and contribute to more than my art practice alone,” says John. “Visual recording of biology has long been practiced by both artists and scientists.”

ART TO ECOSYSTEMS

Week fourteen archival pigment prints on paper.

378x457mm, 2007

“Art, science and the humanities share a common goal, in short, to give greater purpose to the details.”

E.O. Wilson, Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge

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Dan, Mel and John Early, curator of Entomology at Auckland Museum, suggested two sites: native bush in Laingholm in the Waitakeres and Jaggers Bush in Westmere, which contained largely invasive species, particularly privet. This woody alien has long been considered a pest plant in New Zealand, and is controlled by local and regional councils. Despite that, a range of native and exotic fauna feed on privet fruits, from tui to skinks. The puriri moth lays its larvae on the tree where they burrow into the trunk and take five years to develop.

Botanist Dan went out into the field with John to collect a range of information and the contents of pitfall traps regularly for a year.

“Each of us brought new eyes to the project,” says John, “He taught me a lot about plants and I drew his attention to my way of creatively viewing the environment. It was mutually engaging. It went beyond transforming the excitement of discovery into art, by adding to the knowledge of local ecology.”

The privet forest did indeed support a diverse range of native and exotic invertebrates, although smaller than the native site at Laingholm, where at least one as yet undescribed species of spider was collected. The more unusual specimens are being sent to large international collections. A set of baseline information from both sites will be presented to the Auckland Council to inform its management practice of selectively removing privet trees over time and underplanting with natives.

Once the privet is all removed, the team intends redoing the collection process at Jaggers Bush to determine the impact of replanting.

THE FRAGILITY OF LIFE “The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious,” said Albert Einstein. “It is the source of all art and science.” In “Fallen”, John Pusateri’s Collection one and Collection two capture both the fragile wonder of infinitesimal life forms and the irony of scientific work whose goal is to preserve species: that some individuals must die in the process, and their image be immortalised.

John intends extending his interest into collaborations with other scientific researchers, potentially with animals that have the ability to detect electromagnetic fields in the earth.

The catalogue for “Fallen” was supported by Unitec and is available in pdf at www.johnpusateri.com along with images from previous exhibitions.

Hamish Foote, Unitec lecturer in landscape architecture chose historical portraiture for its power as an accessible alternative to the written word and for the opportunity it offers to emphasise or minimise certain qualities in a subject. Renaissance portraits, he says, had certain conventions and motifs that conveyed both social and psychological ‘realities’.

“In those glorious depictions of Italian aristocracy, the painter routinely included complex symbols that discreetly indicated the sitter’s status or psychological make-up,” says Hamish.

“The boundaries between the real and the pictorial space were also blurred by devices such as painting a frame and hanging the subject’s hands over the illusory frame.”

Paintings of the Renaissance era employed certain materials such as egg tempera on gessoed panels.

Hamish used these devices and materials to paint a series of portraits that illuminate how the achievements of a number of early colonial natural history explorers took place within a cultural and perceptual tradition.

EARLY COLONIAL BOTANISTS In discussion with Dr Brian Gill, curator of land vertebrates at the Auckland Museum and landscape historian John Adam, Hamish chose Thomas Cheeseman, Sir James Hector and William Colenso as his subjects – men more commonly known today by place or animal names (Hector’s dolphin) than as eminent scientists engaged in influential conversations with worldrenowned scientists. Cheeseman (pictured) was head of the Auckland Museum for half a century. Botanist,

Thomas Cheeseman (1846-1923) communicated with Darwin on his discovery of the evolutionary mechanism in a native New Zealand orchid that enabled its pollination by bees.

zoologist and writer, he had regular contact with Darwin. Hector, a geologist and surgeon, managed the New Zealand Institute for 36 years while Colenso was a missionary, collector of botanical specimens and a European authority on Ma ¯ori.

“New Zealand as a country played a significant role in the advance of science,” says Hamish. “Our unique ecosystem was a wonderful blank canvas to colonial eyes.”

Images from the period, such as paintings by Hoyt, provided Hamish with starting points whose components he appropriated to reveal the colonial psyche. The resulting paintings were exhibited at Artis Gallery in Parnell and a catalogue produced titled “naturae vulti in orbe: Faces of Nature in the World.” The catalogue, supported by Unitec, includes essays by John Adam and Unitec graduate and art historian David Waddingham.

“Artists can remind us of who and what we are, while the scientists can re-define our role as the dominant predator of the planet, and tell us how the world works and can be sustained.”

Artists in Labs

The Face of Nature is a progression of works by Hamish over the past 15 years, including The Feathered Drawer (2006) and his PhD “Exotica Indigenis Immixta.”

CONTACT Dr Hamish Foote and John Pusateri Lecturers Dept of Landscape Architecture Faculty of Creative Industries & Business Email: hfoote@unitec.ac.nz or jpusateri@unitec.ac.nz

Advance Winter 10 11

architecture

construction

Folding Whare for an uncertain future Humanity may be on the move, as climate change accelerates. What better to flat pack for the journey than a folding whare? Unitec architecture graduate Callum Dowie has designed an easyto-erect shelter that blends new technologies with traditional Pacific forms of construction.

The project model met with widespread approval from architects and engineers.

Unitec funded construction of a fullscale prototype on campus. “We felt it was important to provide solid data on the building’s performance and utility,” says Callum’s supervisor Jeremy Treadwell.

When Master of Architecture student Callum Dowie began work on a final-year project, he had in mind a simple, lightweight hut that could be transported by helicopter to remote locations such as Raoul Island and erected without tools.

On discovering that the Department of Conservation had recently standardised the design of their huts, he was revising his drawings one day when Associate Professor Regan Potangaroa walked past. A practised hand with all types of emergency shelters, Regan immediately spotted its potential for disaster situations.

“Tents are susceptible to wind damage and have no insulation,” says Regan.

“Callum’s design is a more robust interim accommodation. It’s a humane way of sheltering people at short notice and really can be put together by a grandmother.”

FROM MODEL TO MODULAR

¯Ori DESIGN TRADITIONAL MA The design is based on a traditional Ma¯ori tension and compression structure uncovered at a pa site at Kohika, Bay of Plenty, in the 1970s.

“Until the pa site was excavated and the accumulated research published in 2004, there was no evidence of how traditional buildings were actually constructed,” says Callum. “The technique of hiding structural bindings was long forgotten.”

The whare kai at Te Pahou, Poroporo, 1899 – an example of a repeated structural system.

“Let us never lose sight of our little rustic hut.”

Abbé Laugier, Essai sur l’architecture 1753

12 Advance Winter 10

Hidden bindings prevented damage to ocean-going waka when they were dragged up onto the beach. This practice was extended to more elaborate whare, with structural lashings placed on the outside of timber supports and covered by thatching. Once the parts of the whare were constructed they could be disassembled and transported by canoe to new sites.

ORIGINAL ASSEMBLY SYSTEM The use of a tensioned structure not visible to the inside was an important idea in the design of the folding whare, says Callum.

“The ideas are not new, nor are the parts themselves, but the way they’re combined displays an original assembly system. No-one’s built anything quite like this, as far as I’m aware. It’s a prototype for the future.”

The Folding Whare is a spacious single, square room with a front door and a porch, no windows but plenty of light and air circulation from a polycarbonate flashing over the roof ridge. Its walls consist of layers of plywood bonded to either side of a polystyrene sheet to form a Structural Insulated Panel.

The hut is differentiated by the uneven height arrangement of the roof and walls and has an infinitely expandable modular nature, for example a porch at either end or a services block between two such huts.

“My intention at the start of the project,” says Callum, “was to produce something my friends who weren’t architects could understand. The Folding Whare is technically strong but accessible. Everybody ‘gets’ it, from master architects to my mates.”

The Folding Whare was a finalist in the Institute of Architects’ 2009 Student Awards and led to a job offer from Jasmax Architects.

“His final-year project stood out,” says Nick Moyes of Jasmax. “Every decision had a sound rationale behind it and every part was integral to the whole. Callum clearly understood how the project could engage with international humanitarian issues, an awareness we don’t often see at graduate level. It physically demonstrated his passion for and understanding of architecture.”

CONTACT Dr Christoph Schnoor Programme Director Master of Architecture (Professional) Faculty of Creative Industries & Business Email: cschnoor@unitec.ac.nz

The details Material cost: $6,700 Materials used: standard size plywood sheets and polystyrene, steel compression ring, nylon webbing, piano hinge, galvanised steel wire, fence strainer, plastic guttering, polycarbonate flashing Labour: four people to assemble in two hours Tools required: ratchet spanner Weight: 1,050 kg

New concept in managing remote site projects Humanitarian aid, scientific and eco-tourism projects frequently take place on remote or environmentally sensitive sites. Yet, research had rendered no empirical or theoretical models for integrated remote site design management until Unitec senior lecturer Dr Linda Kestle made this the focus of her PhD. “Remote site projects are usually international collaborations and government-funded to some degree,” says Linda Kestle, “which makes them complex to manage because they’re subject to political influence, differing stakeholder outcome expectations, technical, operational and financial issues.”

The work, she says, is often conducted under extreme weather and climatic conditions, tight timeframes and limited site accessibility, with protracted environmental impact protocols and regulatory frameworks. Loss of institutional memory over time is also an issue.

AN INTEGRATED MODEL Linda developed and tested a management model using both theory and data collection from five main sites, Fraser Island eco-resort in Australia, Tongariro National Park huts and lodges, the UN’s humanitarian aid project in West Darfur Sudan, Antarctic scientific bases and the Cape Roberts Drilling Project in the Ross Sea region of Antarctica.

“While every situation is unique, certain recognisable patterns began to emerge,” she says.

Having interviewed scores of people at all levels of involvement, one of the most common requests for ‘what we’d like to see happen’ is more preplanning and integrated management approaches.

“For example, there’s an assumption back at the UN head office that field staff will be sending instant reports but on arrival they find no infrastructure for doing so – barely a packing case, let alone fibre optics.”

“Everyone involved has their own agenda and frequently there’s a lack of shared understanding about outcomes,” she says.

REAL-WORLD USES Having developed the theoretical model, Linda then tested it on a historical Antarctic science drilling project at Cape Roberts and a UN humanitarian project in West Darfur. The model was also put through its paces in Aceh, Indonesia, where the Jesuit Refugee Services were managing a post-disaster reconstruction project.

The management model has worked well in both commercial and non-profit contexts, adding weight to its potential portability across a range of disciplines.

West Darfur has been instrumental for the 2005 United Nations Humanitarian Response review and development of a proposed cluster system approach to humanitarian aid projects. In a research paper “The Cluster Approach Revisited” Linda and co-author Associate Professor Regan Potangaroa have identified where the model could be merged with this cluster approach, and will be presenting and discussing these ideas with decision-makers, including UN agencies, at the International Council of Building Congress in Salford, UK. Linda successfully defended her PhD at the University of Canterbury in December 2009.

CONTACT Dr Linda Kestle Senior Lecturer Dept of Construction Faculty of Technology & Built Environment Email: lkestle@unitec.ac.nz

The model goes well beyond instigating processes and logistics planning. It clarifies thinking about what project partners are trying to achieve.

Advance Winter 10 13

in the Limelight

news

A rare breed of vet Practicing in the field of exotic animal medicine, Dr Jodi Salinsky is also one of only five vets in New Zealand to be qualified as an avian veterinarian. Editor Jade Reidy finds out that Jodi has moved a long way from an early acting career in Miami to lecturing at Unitec and living on a lifestyle block at Drury with her Kiwi partner and an ex-zoo emu.

Dr John Perrott’s forensic ecology work with New Zealand’s small population of kookaburra continues (see Advance Summer 08 for background). Analysis of debris from nests shows the kookaburra are feeding on more than just huhu grubs and beetles. Their diet includes endangered bird and reptile species, along with crayfish and eels. John, along with a research assistant from France and a local teacher fellow, have identified a previously unrecorded genus of lice, Emersoniella, on the kookaburras and are now seeking a second genus found on the birds in their native Australia. Vectors for disease, lice have implications for biosecurity.

skills were put to good use, including popular appearances on the television series Animal House. Her involvement in a Unitec research study on behavioural indicators of post-operative pain in cats made her think, “I want to get back into the exotics field and zoo and wildlife medicine and research.”

HOT BRANDING PINNIPEDS Dr Jodi Salinsky doesn’t quite have her own zoo but she has an unusual companion animal. She met the emu Chiky Mu while working at Wellington Zoo. “He was a young adolescent male and his behaviour was becoming increasingly anti-social toward his parents,” she said. “We tried moving him in with the wallabies and then with ostriches and zebras but he kept getting worse, turning his aberrant behavior toward himself. He really needed his own space, and with no viable alternatives I eventually took him home.”

While working at the SPCA Jodi spoke out regularly about practices she knows from first-hand experience are cruel, such as tail docking of dogs. Docking has yet to be banned in New Zealand, unlike the research-related practice of hot branding of marine mammals.

Still legal in the USA, Jodi has seen the long-term benefits of hot branding with minimal drawbacks and decided to do objective research.

“The Commonwealth countries have more stringent animal ethics than the USA does, and that’s great. The issue of hot branding provokes emotive and anthropomorphic responses, but who knows, it may be no more stressful for the seal than being weighed. I just want to see if there’s a good way to measure that for the sake of the animals and the humans.”

Home for Chiky Mu is a three-quarter acre of paddock. “He’s fine now and loves cuddles, baths and talking to the bulls next door. He would also happily talk to the pukekos, but they tend to freak out, like oh my God, you’re so big!” says Jodi.

As part of a masters degree on stress physiology in marine mammals, she is measuring stress levels during the process where individuals within a robust population of harbour seals are captured in the wild, weighed, measured, flipper tagged and hot branded. This is all being done on populations in the USA where research is already occurring.

ACTOR TO ANIMAL DOCTOR Jodi’s acting career took an unexpected turn in the mid 1990s when she began writing for and presenting reptile and free-flight bird shows at Oregon Zoo with eagles, vultures, falcons, hawks and owls. She began training these raptors, volunteering as a nurse at the zoo’s hospital and conducting her first research project on aggression in monkeys. “We changed their diet from chopped to whole fruits and vegetables, which markedly decreased their levels of aggression,” she says.

“Having to work harder for their food engaged the monkeys’ brains. I became a big fan of whole foods. For me, that was the ‘wow’ moment that solidified my understanding of the incredible importance of daily enrichment for zoo animals.”

Veterinary schools in the USA are extremely competitive but Jodi was accepted. During study for a doctorate in veterinary medicine she came into contact with a wildlife professor whose passion for pinnipeds became her abiding research interest.

14 Advance Winter 10

Dr Jodi Salinsky with her adopted emu, Chiky Mu (Cheeky Emu Chick), at home in Drury.

ZOO CONSULTING “I love seals and sea lions,” Jodi says.

“They’re sentinels of ecosystem health.

By taking a blubber biopsy from them you can test for water contaminants that concentrate in the blubber from eating fish, and fish are what swim in our waterways!”

PACIFIC ANIMAL WELFARE While on a visit to Rarotonga she met her partner Nick, a New Zealander, and moved to the Cook Islands in 2001, imbued with romantic notions of lying on the beach and writing up pinniped studies, including pregnancy ultrasound in female seals. Instead, it was the highly unromantic rat lungworms that became her focus of research. With

the help of a New Zealand veterinary pathologist colleague, she discovered a disease that hadn’t been documented in companion animals in the Pacific Islands. Cerebrospinal Angiostrongylosis lungworms are parasites that live in rats. They were getting into the waterways and into snails and shellfish which, when ingested by dogs, caused paralysis and rapid death.

Jodi responded to the acute need for experienced animal care and welfare education in Rarotonga, acting as resident volunteer vet for the mostly companion and farm animals for two years. In 2003, she came to work at the Auckland SPCA, where her diverse

Jodi was president of the Auckland Vet Society for several years and continues to work in zoo medicine as a consultant at Auckland Zoo’s New Zealand Centre for Conservation Medicine. Chiky Mu’s adolescent dilemma is just one of the behavioural and disease-related challenges that may arise, especially when you have a multitude of different species and thousands of animals.

Although it remains important to have these animals in captivity for educational and conservation purposes, day-to-day issues can also provide food for journal case reports. Her latest report is on an as-yet unidentified illness that occurred in the two cheetah she had as patients at Wellington Zoo.

BATS AND TRANSLOCATIONS Rumour has it that one of her Unitec colleagues may be starting a bat translocation study on which she could collaborate.

“I really dig these tiny New Zealand bats,” she says. “I did a study on maternal behavior in captive Rodriguez fruit bats in the States and was lucky enough to work with short-tailed bats in a situation involving secondary poisonings during my Avian, Zoo and Wildlife Health residency at Massey University a couple of years ago.”

As our conversation winds up, I show Jodi my gecko tattoo. Her eyes light up.

I know what she’s going to say. You get the feeling Chiky Mu has many rivals for her affection.

CONTACT Dr Jodi Salinsky Lecturer Dept of Natural Sciences Faculty of Social & Health Sciences Email: jsalinsky@unitec.ac.nz

Two new books by Unitec associate professors are on the shelves. Action Research in Practice is edited by Eileen Piggot-Irvine and published by the New Zealand Council for Educational Research.

Containing studies on action research across the primary, secondary and tertiary sectors, its strands are drawn together by Eileen’s introduction and discussion of the issues. Characteristic Periodic Variations of Surface Geothermal Features by Jonathan Leaver is a reformat of his PhD thesis for a wider audience and published

by VDM Verlag. The book uses case studies in three New Zealand locations and includes a wealth of contextual information on geothermal systems and modelling methods.

Following last year’s successful visual arts residency by Professor Scott Chamberlin from the University of Colorado in Boulder, Unitec is developing an ongoing exchange with the university. Sculptural ceramicist Mathew McConnell is this year’s artist-inresidence and visiting lecturer. Mathew has exhibited internationally and will be giving artist talks and developing a body of work to exhibit at Unitec’s Snowhite Gallery later this year.

Head of Marine Technology Rob Shaw captained a crew of six on his new lightweight Shaw 9 Karma Police (see Advance Winter 09 issue for more) to win its division in the Bay of Islands Sailing Week Regatta over summer, racing against the other 30ft carbon fibre Shaw 9, Deep Throttle, co-owned by Volvo sailor Justin Ferris. Karma Police also finished ninth out of 200 boats in last October’s 120mile Coastal Classic. The canting keelers’ upwind performance has been impressive and Rob is documenting his design for his Master of Design.

Advance Summer 09 15

management

Monitoring what we do in work hours New technologies are generally introduced into workplaces for positive reasons but intentions don’t always match results, especially when the technology is used to monitor employees.

A new Master of Business thesis explores the rise of electronic workplace surveillance.

“Management claimed that ID swipe cards, CCTVs and GPS systems were not in use yet eight percent of staff said they use a swipe card, seven percent said CCTVs were present and 17 percent were aware of GPS systems being installed in vehicles. Four percent even said they used them in their job roles!”

ALTERING WORKPLACE CULTURE

Master of Business graduate Marta Byrski with a SmartCam, used in video security systems.

In 20 years’ time business meetings will take place via holographic images in virtual settings. Human-computer interfaces will all but disappear, along with traditional offices and hierarchical management. Most work will be carried out by wireless voice recognition software, and telepathic communication may become the norm as nanotechnology develops currently unused synapses in our brains. That’s the vision being put forward on management websites such as BNet.com.

Technologies are set to alter the foundations of how we do business. One of the most common mistakes managers make, says Unitec Department of Management and Marketing lecturer Dr Ken Simpson, is to introduce a new technology without understanding or planning for its effects.

“The underlying attitude is ‘we’ll replace the manual systems with automated ones but we don’t need to change anything else’. In reality practice, processes and relationships all change.”

TRUST IS CRUCIAL Ken supervised a Unitec Master of Business thesis by Marta Byrski that investigated one specific aspect of new

16 Advance Summer 09

technologies – the impact of an increased potential for electronic surveillance.

“Monitoring of staff has been around for as long as one person has employed another,” says Marta, “and such tools as CCTVs, GPS tracking or website sniffers aren’t always viewed negatively.

But even when electronic monitoring systems are introduced for positive reasons they can cause unforeseen damage to workplace relationships.”

Damage includes low morale and resignations. Previous research had shown that good outcomes such as enhanced productivity and security relied on an already established trust between managers and staff, and consulting with staff about the changes, including privacy issues.

PERCEPTIONS DIFFER Marta developed a case study of one rural organisation with 200 staff, in an industry well known for its bureaucratic structures. The organisation had overtly introduced a range of technologies that allowed it, among other changes, to recruit new staff using a ‘work from home’ drawcard. What was fascinating, says Marta, is the disparity in the technologies believed to be in place.

The central theory underlying Marta’s thesis was Douglas McGregor’s X and Y theory that workplace cultures are either authoritative or participative.

Research with ‘Rural Services’ showed that new workplace technologies had begun to transform the organisation from one that had a conservative, topdown leadership style to one that is more flexible, trusting and rewarding.

“The organisation solved its recruitment problems in one hit,” says Ken Simpson, “by taking the view that while 15 out of a hundred people working from home would ‘go fishing’ the other 85 would produce more work than 100 in the office, and it was much cheaper to set up a home-based employee than construct a new building in which to house them.”

Including employees in decisions about introducing new technologies, along with offering more training in their use and minimising monitoring are the three recommendations Marta makes for positive outcomes. Her findings on culture change align with trends being identified in the USA for business environments of the future. They are set to become more democratically managed and flatter in structure, with technology enabling employees to have a greater say.

CONTACT Dr Ken Simpson Lecturer Dept of Management & Marketing Faculty of Creative Industries & Business Email: ksimpson@unitec.ac.nz

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