Will the 2012 Drought Have a Bigger Impact on Grocery Prices than the 1988 Drought

In the summer of 2012, the United States experienced its worst drought since the 1980s. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), 80 percent of agricultural land in the United States experienced drought conditions in 2012. Extremely dry weather can lead to crop failure, which reduces supplies, and subsequently increases prices. This is important to consumers because higher crop prices typically lead to higher prices for groceries. A previous Focus on Prices and Spending article examined the lag between an increase in agricultural prices and an increase in consumers’ grocery bills. The article found that changes in the Producer Price Index (PPI) for processed foods and feeds usually has an impact on the amount consumers pay for food at home 3 to 4 months later. However, periods of drought are considered unusual and may impose a different shock to our food costs, depending on the drought locations and severity

An investigation by LA-ICP-MS of possum tooth enamel as a model for identifying childhood geographical locations of historical and archaeological human from New Zealand

LA -IC P-MS (laser ablation-inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry) has been used to analyse enamel from the teeth of brushtail possum (Trichosurus vulpecula) in order to model a method for identifying the childhood geographical origin of human remains within New Zealand. The model application of the method is promising for establishing locations of historical and archaeological human remains, including preserved heads, upoko tuhi

When does it get any easier?: Beginning teachers' experiences during their first year of teaching.

Studies of beginning teachers' readiness to teach indicate a range of areas in which these teachers feel nervous about teaching, prior to beginning their first teaching position. Studies of the first year of teaching demonstrate that the reality shock of teaching is something that affects beginning teachers in a variety of ways. The literature on the stages of teacher development tells us that the "survival" stage in teaching can last throughout the whole first year of teaching. This New Zealand study follows seven beginning teachers through their first year of teaching and identifies the points at which the teachers began to say, "I'm getting on top of it now"

pH-dependent coarse-grained model of peptides

We propose the first, to our knowledge, coarse-grained modeling strategy for peptides where the effect of changes of the pH can be efficiently described. The idea is based on modeling the effects of the pH value on the main driving interactions. We use reference data from atomistic simulations and experimental databases and transfer its main physical features to the coarse-grained resolution according the principle of "consistency across the scales". The coarse-grained model is refined by finding a set of parameters that, when applied to peptides with different sequences and experimental properties, reproduces the experimental and atomistic data of reference. We use the such parameterized model for performing several numerical tests to check its transferability to other systems and to prove the universality of the related modeling strategy. We have tried systems with rather different response to pH variations, showing a highly satisfactory performance of the model.Comment: accepted for publication in Soft Matte

Translated identities: 'Pakeha' as subjects of the Treaty of Waitangi

The politics of translation is clearly a perennial focus of debate in New Zealand, as shown by thematic links between the New Zealand social anthropology conferences at Waikato in 1990 and Auckland in 2004. Of the many issues of translation swirling around ongoing attempts to interpret the Treaty of Waitangi, a surprisingly neglected one concerns the identities of the people on behalf of whom the Crown signed the Treaty. The term 'Pakeha' appears only once in the Treaty, the question of whom it refers to is by no means straightforward, and it would be unwise to presume that it had the same range of meanings in 1840 as it does in present-day biculturalism. This point is demonstrated by a re-reading of historical material concerning the parties present at or implicated in the signing of the Treaty, including the so-called Pakeha Maori

Baring some essentials: boys' achievement, ERO and leadership.

This article identifies some popular concerns about boys' achievement, and concerns raised by researchers. The Education Review Office report on the achievement of boys is critiqued in relation to the role masculinities play in regulating boys' attitudes to learning. The paper concludes with some implications and obligations for educational leaders in addressing issues about boys' learning and achievement within a context of social justice

Life, the crocodile, the Pisikoa and the wind: representations of teaching in the writings of three pacific authors.

In the course of research involving the experiences of teachers of Pacific ancestry in New Zealand public schools, I became interested in the ways in which teachers were represented in Pacific thinking. Published works give relatively easy access to at least some of the patterns of thought evoked by the term teacher. In this paper I shall look at the kinds of teacher and teaching shown by Ruparuke Petaia, Albert Wendt and Sia Figiel. These authors, all confidently Samoan, portray some of the complexities of learning and teaching from within Samoan sensibilities. ÂLife", "the Crocodile", "the Pisikoa" and "the Wind" are all the names of teachers in this literature. My discussion of Kidnapped by Petaia (1974), Ola by Wendt (1991) and Where we once belonged by Figiel (1996) is not chronologically ordered so much as thematically arranged. The three themes are: decolonisation of education, the European teacher of Pasifika students and the Samoan teacher of Samoan students. Petaia presents a decolonising stance: the teacher as instrument of colonisation or enslavement. This perception is followed through by a discussion of Figiel's character, Siniva, who likewise rejects European knowledge as a form of darkness, and a brief reference to this idea by Wendt. Both Wendt and Figiel portray European teachers as arrogant in their assumptions about the universal nature of their knowledge, and as comic figures of enlightenment colonisation, somehow cut off from embodied human experience. Wendt sees the Samoan teacher as ineffectual, an instrument of a kind of hopeless enlightenment, frustrated by regulations and village traditions, while Fig iel sees her as a real presence in village life but a tragic figure of local ignorance

Editorial: What lies beneath… confessional narratives; lessons from research.

Presents an introduction to the January 2005 issue of the "Waikato Journal of Education.

Editorial: Social inclusion

No description supplie