Design and Development of Atraumatic Vacuum Assisted Delivery Devices

Vacuum-Assisted Delivery (VAD) is an obstetric practice used to assist child delivery during the second stage of labour. During the procedure, the obstetric professional attaches the VAD device to the scalp of the foetus through suction and tractive force is then applied alongside maternal contractions to assist the baby’s passage through the delivery channel. VAD is more prevalent than obstetric forceps due to its ease of use, lower maternal morbidity and improved cosmetic outcome for the mother and her baby. However, safety concerns such as unintentional cup detachment or high vacuum, can lead to induced trauma to the foetus. Since its original inception, there have been limited efforts to evaluate the safety of VAD devices or optimise their design and operation. Here, an engineering approach to assess the devices’ failure modes is proposed to inform training, best obstetric practice and improved VAD design. An instrumented experimental recreation of VAD has been developed to achieve a comprehensive understanding of the mechanics of VAD devices and the associated trauma. It features an instrumented adaptation of a commercially available VAD device (the Kiwi® Omnicup™) connected to a tensile testing machine to simulate obstetric traction onto a head scalp model (fabricated using textile reinforced silicone). A pneumatic control system provides an actively controlled vacuum to the instrumented device. Optical markers, placed onto the scalp model, combined with a high-speed camera system provide tracking of scalp deformation during the mechanical simulation of an obstetric traction. Experimental factors such as traction speed, magnitude of vacuum imposed & changes to the design geometry of the VAD cup and pneumatic architecture including the consideration of frictional attributes of the maternal environment, were investigated. The results from the experimental studies show that a simulated obstetric VAD traction produces a characteristic response from which a number of key clinically relevant metrics can be determined and highlight the association of clinical factors and mechanical factors to device performance. The research informed on the conception of an atraumatic concept to prevent cup detachment. Upon evaluation of the technical and commercial feasibility of the concept, commercial and research opportunities were identified, which could help improve the performance of VAD devices, in the future

Traces of identity: the construction of white ethnicity in New Zealand.

Settler colonies arose out of a form of European colonialism where a white collectivity was installed permanently on territory formerly occupied by non-European 'indigenous' peoples. In British colonies where white settlers formed the majority population - the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand - the political, economic and cultural infrastructure has historically privileged whites over 'indigenous' groups. -In recent years territorial appropriations, which formed the basis of national wealth in these places, have been the focus of struggles for self-determination by 'first peoples'. This thesis focuses on the colonisation of New Zealand to show that although there were commonalities between white settler colonies, generally the historic specificity of nation building in each place, together with the way in which racial hierarchies were interpreted by colonialists, meant that national formations developed differently. New Zealand was the last of the 'dominions' to be settled and it became a commonplace that this was the most successful British colony in terms of racial harmony, largely because of a treaty made with the Maori. However recent reinterpretations of the nation's history have shown that while this treaty has functioned as a symbol of nationhood, notions of 'civility' which were brought to bear on the Maori people meant the terms of the treaty were never honoured. The thesis examines, through analyses of a variety of cultural artefacts, - from nineteenth century travel writing to contemporary cultural forms - films, television and museums -, the way ‘civilising discourses' underpinned a matrix of ethnic, gendered and class-based differences which legitimated the privilege of the settler majority. In recent years reinterpretations of the Treaty of Waitangi, and the severing of ties with Britain, have led to new forms of nationhood constructed around the ‘indigenisation' of the 'treaty partners' - Maori and Pakeha. Drawing on Cultural Studies approaches to representation and ethnicity, the thesis addresses issues which arise specifically from the way in which these shifts have challenged the hegemony of 'whiteness' in the colonial context

Views of Paradise: A Photographic Atlas of the Artificial Environments of Zoological Gardens and Aquariums in Oceania

“Why photograph zoos?” is the question that guides the project Views of Paradise, a photographic atlas of artificial environments from 82 zoos and aquariums in Australia, Fiji, New Caledonia, New Zealand and Papua New Guinea. In Views of Paradise, the analyses of the resulting images identify aspects of landscape representations in zoos in relation to natural and cultural environments, situating zoos within the conceptual spaces of paradise, utopia, dystopia and heterotopia. Because people have a predisposition to only seeing animals, making them blind to the apparatus of the zoo, this research uses the absence of animals in the images as a method to shift the focus of vision away from animals and in the direction of their hybrid and lifeless living environments. Zoos occupy an ambiguous position in society, being perceived as places of imprisonment and protection. From menageries, meant to entertain the human curiosity, they are changing into institutions committed to conservation, research and education. Still, zoos reflect our need to care for the environment against our inability to re-create an environment as perfect as that found in nature, or to preserve it in the wild. The atlas highlights the importance of photography as a research method for the systematic collection of visual information and production of a criticism that is not only directed at zoos, but to humanity, for environmental practices that disregard the rights of non-humans. Its artistic visions of zoos and nature, utopian or dystopian, depending from which angle the absence of the animal is understood, are born from the transformative effect of photography on perception: by photographing zoo spaces and objects without the animals, they are transformed from insignificant artifices to subjects worth of inquiry, to signal the possibility of a meaningful existence for the empty zoo, either as image or as an actual site

Tools and processes for creating and maintaining own Linux based distributions in corporate environment

Nokia has been maintaining its own Linux distribution, dubbed Nokia Linux, for quite some time, and while the distribution has been successful, supporting it has become tedious at very least. The current version of Nokia Linuxes build system builds a monolithic distribution. This creates a multitude of problems ranging from having to rebuild all of the distribution's software packages after patching a single package to not being able to efficiently customise images according to user needs. The current version also lacks any kind of stable release management causing every user to either maintain their own stable releases or having to constantly update from the official version. Apart from being too monolithic, the support of the software packages is insufficient. An efficient support team needs to be created to answer any internal support requests Nokia Linux users might have. In this thesis we first define our corporate environmental needs. We identify three needs: support, storage and security. We then define three methods for organising the support. We compare them then to the current way of delivering support. We conclude that the three methods are probably better than the current one, but more research is needed before any definite answer can be given. We then define three processes for creating and maintaining an own Linux distribution in our corporate environment. We show two of these processes in action through a proof of concept project. With this project we show that the two processes we tested can be used to create and update an own Linux based distribution image composed of RPM packages. These two processes were tested with multiple tools to show that these processes can be used flexibly and without having to lock into only one set of tools

Digital reconstruction of soft-tissue structures in fossils

AbstractIn the last two decades, advances in computational imaging techniques and digital visualization have created novel avenues for the study of fossil organisms. As a result, paleontology has undergone a shift from the pure study of physically preserved bones and teeth, and other hard tissues, to using virtual computer models to study specimens in greater detail, restore incomplete specimens, and perform biomechanical analyses. The rapidly increasing application of these techniques has further paved the way for the digital reconstruction of soft-tissue structures, which are rarely preserved or otherwise available in the fossil record. In this contribution, different types of digital soft-tissue reconstructions are introduced and reviewed. Provided examples include methodological approaches for the reconstruction of musculature, endocranial components (e.g., brain, inner ear, and neurovascular structures), and other soft tissues (e.g., whole-body and life reconstructions). Digital techniques provide versatile tools for the reconstruction of soft tissues, but given the nature of fossil specimens, some limitations and uncertainties remain. Nevertheless, digital reconstructions can provide new information, in particular if interpreted in a phylogenetically grounded framework. Combined with other digital analytical techniques (e.g., finite element analysis [FEA], multibody dynamics analysis [MDA], and computational fluid dynamics [CFD]), soft-tissue reconstructions can be used to elucidate the paleobiology of extinct organisms and to test competing evolutionary hypotheses.</jats:p

Taking shape: The data science of elastic shape analysis with practical applications

This thesis was submitted for the award of Doctor of Philosophy and was awarded by Brunel University London.A mathematical curve can represent many different objects, both physical and abstract, from the outline curve of an artefact in an image to the weight of growing animal to the set of frequencies used in a sound. Regardless of these variations, the curves can almost always vary non-linearly. One way to study shapes and their potential variations is elastic shape analysis, a rich theory of which has developed over the past twenty years. However, methods of elastic shape analysis are seldom utilized in practical applications on real-world data, especially outside of the mathematical shape analysis community. Our aim in this thesis is to explore some practical applications of elastic shape analysis. To do this, we work with various types of shape data, the majority of which are based on image datasets. As our focus is on two-dimensional curves, it is important to be able to robustly extract contours from images, before we can apply elastic shape analysis tools. In order to analyse the shapes in a dataset, we turn to methods of machine learning, to investigate the applications of elastic shape analysis in classification. In this thesis, we introduce an anthology of projects, in order to emphasise and under- stand the potential of elastic shape analysis in practical applications. There are four main projects in this thesis: (i) Classification of objects using outlines and the comparisons between methods of elastic shape analysis, geometric morphometrics, and human experts, with a focus on ancient Greek vases, (ii) Mussel species identification and a demonstra- tion that shape may not be enough in some applications, (iii) A novel tool to monitor the development of k ̄ak ̄ap ̄o chicks, and (iv) Classifying individual kiwi based on acoustic data from their calls. By combining tools from computer vision and machine learning with methods of elastic shape analysis, we introduce a practical framework for the application of elastic shape analysis, through a data science lens

First-Year Programming Students: Perceptions of Their Tertiary Learning Environment

The purpose of this research was to investigate first-year tertiary programming students' perceptions of their learning environment, based on the subgroups of gender and "new arrivals" (immigrant and international students of diverse nationalities, culture and educational backgrounds). The literature provides strong evidence that the nature of the learning environment for females studying computing can be uninviting and may be influential in the low rates of female enrolments and retention compared with males. Studies indicate that the cultural norms and artefacts of computing, the minority status of women in computing courses, attitudes, language, experience and institutional context all contribute to a learning environment that proves unattractive and can be detrimental for some women. In recent years, there has been an increased enrolment by New Zealand educational institutions of new arrival students. Research suggests that new arrival students, who leave their home country to live and study in a foreign land, experience difficulties in their learning environment and often have problems adjusting to living and studying in their host country. This research used a mixed-method design to investigate first-year computer programming students' perceptions of their learning environment at three tertiary institutions in Wellington, New Zealand. A survey, the College and University Classroom Environment Inventory (CUCEI), was completed by 239 students, yielding quantitative data about students' perceptions of their Actual and Preferred learning environment. In addition, 28 students, selected to represent gender and new arrival subgroups, participated in interviews and 11 hours of observation were conducted in programming classrooms.The findings from the survey indicated that students perceived their learning environment with some satisfaction but they suggested improvements relating to the innovation and individualisation dimensions of their learning environment. The perceptions of the student subgroups, defined by gender and as new arrivals were investigated. Although the findings from multivariate analysis of variance of the CUCEI results did not identify differences between the subgroups the interviews revealed wider equity issues and concerns that highlighted differences amongst students of the sex and origin subgroups. Recommendations, based on the study's findings, include suggestions to improve institutional policy relating to the organisation of teaching practice and some cautions about the further use of the survey. The findings have important implications for creating a more equitable and positive learning environment for all students