A darn good hiding or the naughty step? : ideas on child discipline in New Zealand 1890-2008 : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in History at Massey University

This thesis examines the history of child discipline in New Zealand since 1890, taking into account both trends in child-rearing advice and the common practices of ordinary parents. It explores the common stereotype that children "these days" are ill-disciplined in comparison with their earlier counterparts, and argues that while physical punishment is used less often than in the past, and usually in a milder form, it is still used more frequently and harshly than would be expected from the results of recent opinion polls. Child discipline has always been about setting a child up to live a happy life. As ideas on how to achieve this goal have changed, so too have the acceptable forms of punishment. During the 1890s-1920s, the difference between good discipline and abuse was simply a matter of frequency, and this idea was shared by both parenting advisors and the general public. Since the 1930s, however, parenting experts were frequently out of step with the parents they were trying to teach, and that their influence on parenting practice was at best delayed, and at worst entirely contradictory to that which they intended. Letters magazine and newspaper articles and contemporary studies on attitudes to discipline are used to show that parenting practice was often very different to that promoted by parenting advisors. Finally, this thesis concludes that a contextualist approach best suits the history of child-rearing advice in New Zealand, while an evolutionist approach is more appropriate in terms of common practice

Price Transmission, Market Power and Returns to Scale

In this paper, we aim to model the vertical relation between retailers and suppliers in the food industry whereby retailers exercise seller power in their relation with consumers and buyer power in their relation with producers. We then evaluate the degree of price transmission, relative to the perfectly competitive benchmark, from the farm to the retail sector assuming a supply shock. With the view to evaluating the impact of market power's interaction with industry technology on the degree of price transmission, we assume industry technology to be characterised by variable input proportions and non-constant returns to scale. Our model predicts that, relative to that which obtains when markets are perfectly competitive and industry technology is characterised by constant returns to scale, the degree of price transmission when market power and industry technology interact cannot be unambiguously determined.price transmission, returns to scale, market power, Demand and Price Analysis, Marketing, L11, Q13,

A method of improving contrast in illustrations of coalified fossils

A simple, economic method of enhancing the contrast and, therefore, improving the qual ity of certain palaeontological photographic illustrations is outlined. The technique, which involves the use of polarising filters, in no way alters the negatives or prints. In recommending this technique, it is hoped some of the confusion arising from inadequate illustrations will be removed.F.R.

The Death of King Arthur

In late Autumn 2010, Peter Ackroyd’s The Death of King Arthur was released in hardback by Penguin in the UK. When asked where the idea for the book came from, Alexis Kirschbaum, Editorial Director at Penguin Classics, revealed that she had commissioned it herself. She had a belief that the time was right for a more accessible version of Malory—and chose Ackroyd as the writer best fitted to bring that belief to market. This was good business sense: Ackroyd’s name has cultural capital, and would have impact on the review circuit as well as on bookshop shelves. His work includes an imaginative remediation of Chaucer in The Clerkenwell Tales, a biography, Chaucer: Brief Lives, and a modern retelling of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales for Penguin Classics, (a brave move since Neville Coghill’s verse translation was and is still on their lists and is still the best known and cited modern version). Like Caxton five hundred years earlier, Kirschbaum wanted to bring Malory to a wider readership. As Editorial Director of the Penguin Classics titles, it is her role to keep that list appealing to readers, drawing in new ones and tempting those already familiar with canonical texts to read them again

The Hyperaccumulation of Zinc in Sunflowers and its Effect on Disease Resistance

Sunflowers are considered to be a part of a group of plants known as hyperaccumulators that share the ability to accumulate high amounts of heavy metals in the above ground organs, far in excess of the levels found in other species, often without suffering any phytotoxic effects. Quantifying the effects of zinc accumulation through the lens of the elemental defense hypothesis is essential for uncovering if there is a means to increase herbivore resistance in agricultural settings without the use of external interventions such as pesticides. A greenhouse study was conducted on four widely grown commercial cultivars of sunflower. Each cultivar was grown under multiple soil Zn concentrations ranging from 0 to 200 mg/kg of soil. Growth rate measurements were taken at evenly spaced intervals until maturity. Samples of leaves were taken from plants and tested for Zn concentration. A qualitative study using Vanessa cardui was conducted to observe the effects of zinc in the diet of caterpillars. Significant variation in the level of zinc accumulated in the leaves was observed as well as variation in overall biomass per treatment level. V. cardui experienced high rates of mortality at high zinc concentrations suggesting that further study may lead to significant evidence that Zinc accumulation is a form of herbivore resistance