A study to explore mothers' and fathers' shared and individual experiences of premature birth : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Psychology at Massey University, Albany, New Zealand

This qualitative research project using some of the methodologies of Grounded Theory looked at five couples' experiences of premature birth, in particular comparing and contrasting the experiences of mothers and fathers. Significant themes that were identified were: helplessness, related to parents' belief that they were unable to alter outcomes for their baby; issues of control around the care of the newborn baby; communication and relationships with healthcare staff and the impact on parents' perceptions of inclusiveness in the care of their infants; and for fathers in particular, feeling that they missed out on aspects of the parenting of their newborn. The conclusions were that, due to a number of factors within the NICU environment in conjunction with gender specific methods of coping, fathers tend to be marginalised and excluded from the care of their babies. As a result of this, fathers then distance themselves from contact with their newborns, leading to the cyclic exacerbation of the issues of control and helplessness, which further reinforces their disengagement from the situation. Mothers struggled with the same issues, but not to the extent that they withdrew emotionally and physically from the care of their babies

Currnent and likely future performance of advanced natural ventilation

Advanced natural ventilation (ANV), often characterised by the use of dedicated ventilation stacks, shafts and other architecture features such as atria, light wells, has gained popularity for natural ventilation design in recent decades. In this research, a prototype ANV system is proposed, and the likely thermal performance in a range of UK climatic conditions predicted using dynamic thermal simulation. The simulations showed that ANV has greater resilience to future climatic conditions in the north of the UK than in the south-east and that, for the assumed internal heat gains, the design studied is unlikely to maintain comfortable conditions in the southeast of England beyond the middle of this century

Remote booting in a hostile world: to whom am I speaking? [Computer security]

“This material is presented to ensure timely dissemination of scholarly and technical work. Copyright and all rights therein are retained by authors or by other copyright holders. All persons copying this information are expected to adhere to the terms and constraints invoked by each author's copyright. In most cases, these works may not be reposted without the explicit permission of the copyright holder." “Copyright IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. However, permission to reprint/republish this material for advertising or promotional purposes or for creating new collective works for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or to reuse any copyrighted component of this work in other works must be obtained from the IEEE.”Today's networked computer systems are very vulnerable to attack: terminal software, like that used by the X Window System, is frequently passed across a network, and a trojan horse can easily be inserted while it is in transit. Many other software products, including operating systems, load parts of themselves from a server across a network. Although users may be confident that their workstation is physically secure, some part of the network to which they are attached almost certainly is not secure. Most proposals that recommend cryptographic means to protect remotely loaded software also eliminate the advantages of remote loading-for example, ease of reconfiguration, upgrade distribution, and maintenance. For this reason, they have largely been abandoned before finding their way into commercial products. The article shows that, contrary to intuition, it is no more difficult to protect a workstation that loads its software across an insecure network than to protect a stand-alone workstation. In contrast to prevailing practice, the authors make essential use of a collision-rich hash function to ensure that an exhaustive off-line search by the opponent will produce not one, but many candidate pass words. This strategy forces the opponent into an open, on-line guessing attack and offers the user a defensive strategy unavailable in the case of an off-line attack.Peer reviewe

Engaging with change: Information and communication technology professionals’ perspectives on change at the mid-point in the UK/EU Brexit process

Background Information and Communication Technology (ICT) has been a key agent of change in the 21st century. Given the role of ICT in changing society, this research explores the responses and attitudes to change over time from ICT professionals and ICT academics in dealing with the potentially far reaching political challenge triggered by the UK’s 2016 European Union Referendum and its decision to leave the European Union (Brexit). Whilst the vote was a UK based decision its ramifications have global implications and as such the research was not confined to the UK. This article presents the second phase of the research at the mid-point in the UK/European Union (EU) Brexit process, thus complementing the findings gathered immediately after the Referendum decision. The fundamental question being researched was: What are ICT professionals’ personal and professional perspectives on the change triggered by Brexit in terms of opportunities and threats? Methods and findings Data was collected through a survey launched in March 2018, one year on from the UK’s triggering of Article 50 and marking the mid-point in the two-year Brexit process. The survey replicated the one delivered at the point of the Referendum decision in 2016 with some developments. In addition, two appreciative inquiry focus groups were conducted. The research sought to understand any shifting perspectives on the opportunities and threats that would exist post-Brexit for ICT professionals and academics. 59% of survey participants were negative regarding the Brexit decision. Participants noted the position post-Brexit for the UK, and the remaining 27 EU Member States (EU27), was still very uncertain at this stage. They observed that planned change versus uncertainty provides for very different responses. In spite of the uncertainty, the participants were able to consider and advocate for potential opportunities although these were framed from national perspectives. The opportunities identified within the appreciative inquiry focus groups aligned to those recorded by survey participants with similar themes highlighted. However, the optimum conditions for change have yet to be reached as there is still not an informed position, message and clear leadership with detailed information for the ICT context. Further data will be gathered after the UK exit from the EU, assuming this occurs

Environmental accounting for ecosystem conservation: Linking societal and ecosystem metabolisms

This paper proposes an approach to environmental accounting useful for studying the feasibility of socio-economic systems in relation to the external constraints posed by ecological compatibility. The approach is based on a multi-scale analysis of the metabolic pattern of ecosystems and societies and it provides an integrated characterization of the resulting interaction. The text starts with a theoretical part explaining (i) the implicit epistemological revolution implied by the notion of ecosystem metabolism and the fund-flow model developed by Georgescu-Roegen applied to environmental accounting, and (ii) the potentials of this approach to create indicators to assess ecological integrity and environmental impacts. This revolution also makes it possible to carry out a multi-scale integrated assessment of ecosystem and societal metabolisms at the territorial level. In the second part, two applications of this approach using an indicator of the negentropic cost show the possibility to characterize in quantitative and qualitative terms degrees of alteration (crop cultivation, tree plantations)for different biomes (tropical and boreal forests). Also, a case study for land use scenarios has been included. The proposed approach represents an integrated multi-scale tool for the analysis of nature conservation scenarios and strategies.Comment: 29 pages including 6 figure

Positive coaching psychology: A case study in the hybridization of positive psychology

Positive psychology has fruitfully interacted with numerous other disciplines, creating new hybrid paradigms. One such instance involves coaching, which shares the field’s focus on enhancing wellbeing and performance across life domains. As a result, there is considerable interest in exploring its interaction with positive psychology, and developing frameworks for their integration. To shed further light on their relationship, this paper explores four perspectives on the intersections and differences between these emerging fields. These include perspectives where: (a) the fields are essentially coterminous; (b) positive psychology encompasses coaching; (c) coaching encompasses positive psychology; and (d) the fields overlap but are not coterminous (the author’s preferred perspective). More generally, the paper offers suggestions for how positive psychology can integrate with the various kinship fields in these processes of hybridisation

Primordial black hole production during preheating in a chaotic inflationary model

In this paper we review the production of primordial black holes (PBHs) during preheating after a chaotic inflationary model. All relevant equations of motion are solved numerically in a modified version of HLattice, and we then calculate the mass variance to determine structure formation during preheating. It is found that production of PBHs can be a generic result of the model, even though the results seem to be sensitive to the values of the smoothing scale. We consider a constraint for overproduction of PBHs that could uncover some stress between inflation-preheating models and observations.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figures. Prepared for the conference proceedings of the 9th Mexican School on Gravitation and Mathematical Physics : Cosmology for the XXI Century: Inflation, Dark Matter and Dark Energ

Etymologies of wellbeing: Exploring the non-English roots of English words used in positive psychology

Mainstream psychology can be considered relatively Western-centric, as reflected in the fact that its discourse and theorising is mainly in English, influencing how it conceptualises its subject matter. However, English itself is a complex product of multiple cultural influences, including the widespread borrowing of words from other languages. To shed light on this issue, this paper conducted an etymological analysis of a sample of words in psychology – focusing as a case study on a seminal article in positive psychology. The analysis identified 1333 lexemes, of which more than 60% can be regarded as loanwords (i.e., borrowed from other languages). The analysis shows the great cultural influences that have combined to form English, and hence psychology, yet also the extent to which this influence has been limited to certain cultures. The paper thus illustrates how psychology has benefitted from insights forged in other languages, but moreover how it might continue to do so through more systematic and comprehensive forms of cross-cultural engagement

Anger as a moral emotion: A 'bird's eye' systematic review

Anger is common problem for which counselling/psychotherapy clients seek help, and is typically regarded as an invidious negative emotion to be ameliorated. However, it may be possible to reframe anger as a moral emotion, arising in response to perceived transgressions, thereby endowing it with meaning. In that respect, the current paper offers a ‘bird’s eye’ systematic review of empirical research on anger as a moral emotion (i.e., one focusing broadly on the terrain as a whole, rather than on specific areas). Three databases were reviewed from the start of their records to January 2019. Eligibility criteria included empirical research, published in English in peer-reviewed journals, on anger specifically as a moral emotion. 175 papers met the criteria, and fell into four broad classes of study: survey-based; experimental; physiological; and qualitative. In reviewing the articles, this paper pays particular attention to: how/whether anger can be differentiated from other moral emotions; antecedent causes and triggers; contextual factors that influence or mitigate anger; and outcomes arising from moral anger. Together, the paper offers a comprehensive overview of current knowledge into this prominent and problematic emotion. The results may be of use to counsellors and psychotherapists helping to address anger issues in their clients