How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land? : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in English at Massey University

Hymns have always been part of Christian liturgy, expressing the faith in congregational song. The NZ hymnwriter of the late twentieth century writes within a secular society which increasingly questions the relevance of religion. This thesis examines and describes issues with which modern hymnwriters are confronted in the practice of their work, the intention being to produce a work of practical benefit to those using hymns in some way. The thesis begins with an historical overview of the ways hymnology has developed. From this background it is possible to ascertain a working definition of a hymn, and to discover how hymns have been used over the centuries to express certain theological points of view about the nature of the church, particularly as it relates to society as a whole. Hymns are a combination of doctrine and song. How words and music combine to form the complex experience of a hymn is discussed in Chapter two. Music has always been a contentious issue within the church for it brings the possibility of the "secular" into worship. Music style is an expression of a church's theology of church in the world. The choice of music as part of the experience of a hymn is a crucial issue. In a secular society, the charge of irrelevance is levelled at religion in general, and hymns in particular. Chapter Three discusses the meaning of "relevance" for hymnology. This is related to hermeneutics, liturgy, and tradition, with particular focus on Reader-Response Criticism as a tool for understanding the dynamics of the texts relationship to the reader/singer. The modern hymnwriter must overcome the conservatism of hymnbook collections. The quest for relevance and the exploration of new styles takes place largely outside the confines of hymnbooks. As liturgy is the milieu within which hymns are experienced and for which they are written, the thesis raises four questions by which to test the effectiveness of hymns in worship. During the writing of this thesis an issue arose several times which is more properly the province of religious sociology or theology; the way in which hymns express the power struggle between the "organisation" and the people. many music forms used in the church began as people's songs and dances, but church use has dampened the original liveliness of these forms. I have addressed this issue in passing without exploring it fully. Because I am a Methodist presbyter, there are times when my Methodist bias shows. I make no apology for that. The NZ context from which I write is also an important factor in the choosing of illustrative material. I have deliberately used With One Voice as a source book for most hymn quotations as it is used in many NZ churches and can therefore add to the practical nature of this work. The thesis is not a critique of With One Voice

SpaceSemantics: an architecture for modeling environments

The notion of modeling location is fundamental to location awareness in ubiquitous computing environments. The investigation of models and the integration with the myriad of location sensing technologies makes for a challenging discipline. Despite notable development of location models, we believe that many challenges remain unresolved. Complexity and scalability, diverse environments coupled with various sensors and managing the privacy and security of sensitive information are open issues. In this paper we discuss our previous experience combining location sensing with mobile agents and how the lessons learnt have lead to the conception of SpaceSemantics, an open architecture for modeling environments

On the digital forensic analysis of the Firefox browser via recovery of SQLite artifacts from unallocated space

A technique and supporting tool for the recovery of browsing activity (both stored and deleted) from current and recent versions of the Firefox web-browser is presented. The generality of the technique is discussed: It is applicable to any software that uses the popular SQLite embedded database engine such as the Apple Safari web-browser and many Android apps

Beyond rules: The next generation of expert systems

The PARAGON Representation, Management, and Manipulation system is introduced. The concepts of knowledge representation, knowledge management, and knowledge manipulation are combined in a comprehensive system for solving real world problems requiring high levels of expertise in a real time environment. In most applications the complexity of the problem and the representation used to describe the domain knowledge tend to obscure the information from which solutions are derived. This inhibits the acquisition of domain knowledge verification/validation, places severe constraints on the ability to extend and maintain a knowledge base while making generic problem solving strategies difficult to develop. A unique hybrid system was developed to overcome these traditional limitations

Organic loading rate: a promising microbial management tool in anaerobic digestion

This study investigated the effect of changes in organic loading rate (OLR) and feedstock on the volatile fatty acids (VFAs) production and their potential use as a bioengineering management tool to improve stability of anaerobic digesters. Digesters were exposed to one or two changes in OLR using the same or different co-substrates (Fat Oil and Grease waste (FOG) and/or glycerol). Although all the OLR fluctuations produced a decrease in biogas and methane production, the digesters exposed twice to glycerol showed faster recovery towards stable conditions after the second OLR change. This was correlated with the composition of the VFAs produced and their mode of production, from parallel to sequential, resulting in a more efficient recovery from inhibition of methanogenesis. The change in acids processing after the first OLR increase induced a shift in the microbial community responsible of the process optimisation when the digesters were exposed to a subsequent OLR increase with the same feedstock. When the digesters were exposed to an OLR change with a different feedstock (FOG), the recovery took 7d longer than with the same one (glycerol). However, the microbial community showed functional resilience and was able to perform similarly to pre-exposure conditions. Thus, changes in operational conditions can be used to influence microbial community structure for anaerobic digestion (AD) optimisation. Finally, shorter recovery times and increased resilience of digesters were linked to higher numbers of Clostridia incertae sedis XV, suggesting that this group may be a good candidate for AD bioaugmentation to speed up recovery after process instability or OLR increase

Bioengineering options and strategies for the optimization of anaerobic digestion processes

Anaerobic digestion (AD) is a complex biological process, and the microbial diversity and dynamics within the reactor needs to be understood and considered when process optimization is sought after. Microbial interactions such as competition, mutualism, antagonism and syntrophism affect the function and the survival of single species in the community; hence, they need to be understood for process improvement. Although the relationship between process performance and the microbial community structure is well established, changes in the community might occur without detectable changes in gas production and reactor performance. Recent molecular-based studies have highlighted the complexity of AD systems revealing the presence of several uncultivated species and the need for further research in this area. However, this information is still rarely used for process optimization. The integration of next generation sequencing technologies, such as 454-pyrosequencing, with other techniques, such as phospholipid-derived fatty acids analysis, can provide a holistic understanding of the microbial community. In addition, the in-depth phylogenetic resolution provided can aid environmental ecologists and engineers to better understand and optimize the AD process and consolidate the information collected to date

Media Education and the Practice of Democracy

They do say that all ideas have their time, and in media education it seems that it is the time for democracy. Books and papers begin to appear and there are conferences with democracy in their titles to replace a focus on the postmodern, or identity. There seems to be a general consensus that democracy is a ‹good thing›. But, as with most other significant terms which hold centre stage for a while, they need to be interrogated with some care. For some more critical educators democracy takes its place alongside Gandhi’s comment when asked about Western Civilisation – he said it would be a good idea. The ‹practice› of democracy takes on a poignant, ironic, desperate or cynical cloak in the light of recent world events and the rise of terrorism as a political weapon. It depends where you stand. Democracy is not something that thrills the hearts and minds of the vast majority of citizens who live in nations who declare themselves to be democratic. Apathy and cynicism work together against democratic growth. But so do governments whose declared democratic aims pay scant attention to the people they are supposed to represent. And then there are the ‹democratic› exercises which supposedly involve the people in a conversation (‹we are listening› they say) which results in the status quo being implemented by politicians with morally superior physiognomies. After all, they say, we did ask your opinions. We did ask you to participate. And so democracy staggers from crisis to disaster...They do say that all ideas have their time, and in media education it seems that it is the time for democracy. Books and papers begin to appear and there are conferences with democracy in their titles to replace a focus on the postmodern, or identity. There seems to be a general consensus that democracy is a ‹good thing›. But, as with most other significant terms which hold centre stage for a while, they need to be interrogated with some care. For some more critical educators democracy takes its place alongside Gandhi’s comment when asked about Western Civilisation – he said it would be a good idea. The ‹practice› of democracy takes on a poignant, ironic, desperate or cynical cloak in the light of recent world events and the rise of terrorism as a political weapon. It depends where you stand. Democracy is not something that thrills the hearts and minds of the vast majority of citizens who live in nations who declare themselves to be democratic. Apathy and cynicism work together against democratic growth. But so do governments whose declared democratic aims pay scant attention to the people they are supposed to represent. And then there are the ‹democratic› exercises which supposedly involve the people in a conversation (‹we are listening› they say) which results in the status quo being implemented by politicians with morally superior physiognomies. After all, they say, we did ask your opinions. We did ask you to participate. And so democracy staggers from crisis to disaster..

Using multiple GPUs to accelerate string searching for digital forensic analysis

String searching within a large corpus of data is an important component of digital forensic (DF) analysis techniques such as file carving. The continuing increase in capacity of consumer storage devices requires corresponding im-provements to the performance of string searching techniques. As string search-ing is a trivially-parallelisable problem, GPGPU approaches are a natural fit – but previous studies have found that local storage presents an insurmountable performance bottleneck. We show that this need not be the case with modern hardware, and demonstrate substantial performance improvements from the use of single and multiple GPUs when searching for strings within a typical forensic disk image