Material effects on strawbale wall seismic capacity

Strawbale construction is a sustainable, viable alternative to conventional building practices. As a newly introduced appendix to the International Residential Code (IRC), the strawbale construction requirements may benefit from further evaluation and possible refinement. Such evaluation and refinement may lead towards code change proposals that will improve the provisions and make strawbale construction safer and more accessible to the general public. This seismic test series addressed the effect of mesh wire type on ductility and the validity of the existing wall slenderness limits. The tests focused on slender walls dominated by flexural deformations. Welded wire mesh wall performed better than the woven wire mesh wall of the same detailing, yet fell short of expected values. Slenderness must continue to be analyzed as the results of a wall using 14” bales were impacted by bale irregularity. The additional tests done as part of this thesis, including vertical load tests and materials testing, added to the understanding of strawbale construction performance and expanded the corpus of strawbale wall test data. All tested walls performed satisfactorily under vertical loading in post-seismic conditions. The purpose of this test series was to validate and potentially suggest improvements to the building code provisions to enhance the prevalence and safety of strawbale construction

Monitoring first year Maori students enrolled in selected Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences courses: A report prepared for the Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences

Monitoring first year Maori Students Enrolled in Selected Faculty of Arts andSocial Sciences Courses. The total number of Maori students targeted by this project was 182, representing 93% of the total number of Maori students enrolled in Semester B level one courses. The majority of students participating in this initiative were first year students, although a small number of students taking 100 level courses were second, third or graduate year students. 11 Student views on the monitoring and support initiative Students were provided with the opportunity to comment on the monitoring and support initiative. All students contacted (49) recommended that this intervention continue for future first year Maori students enrolled in FASS

Evaluating the effectiveness of rangeland resting initiatives in communal grazing systems in South Africa

In South Africa, rangeland environments provide ecosystem services upon which many broader natural processes and millions of livelihoods depend. Against a background of environmental degradation and widespread poverty, trade-offs between different services must be carefully managed. 17% of South African rangeland is held under communal tenure, bringing unique management challenges. This thesis investigates the efficacy of Conservation Agreements (CAs) - an example of a Payments for Ecosystems Services approach - in achieving positive environmental and social outcomes within three communities in the Mvenyane region of Eastern Cape, South Africa. It seeks to establish whether areas of rangeland in these communities were successfully rested, a key tenet of these agreements. Biomass sampled from designated rested areas was compared against samples from exclosures within these rested areas. Focus groups (FG) were also conducted with local signatory institutions known as Grazing Associations (GAs) to identify factors contributing to in/effective resting. The findings show that rangeland was not effectively rested in any of the communities studied. Insights from the New Institutionalist paradigm and the broader literature were used to analyse data from focus groups and a household survey. This indicated inadequate institutional capacity to deliver management strategies required to satisfy the terms of the CAs, and limitations in the pro-social outcomes the CAs were designed to provide. In particular, the design of CAs contributed to the exclusion of marginalised groups from GAs. More broadly, a dichotomy was revealed between the market-based approach underpinning the CA arrangements, and the priorities of many rangeland users. Further research into reasons for non-participation in GAs, and into other local institutions of power, is suggested, alongside key policy recommendations. <br/

Telling the bees: a collection of poems with a critical preface

Telling the Bees: A Collection of Poems with a Critical Preface is an anthology of fifty poems with an introductory preface. The poems represent an individual journey in writing poetry. The preface examines closely the sustained process of writing the poems. It offers a phenomenological account of an apprenticeship as a developing poet, taking into account the many and varied sources of inspiration, as well as exploring the specific role of memory as a catalyst for the poetic imagination. In the first chapter, divided into three parts, I examine the creative process in relation to the poems in the anthology, with a focus on the development of a poetic voice and personal sources of inspiration. Chapters Two and Three consider in detail the specific influence of Seamus Heaney and Virginia Woolf, both of whom have deepened my understanding of the transformation of everyday experience into poetic language. Their respective critical and autobiographical writing provides an important insight into the mind of the writer, and a further illumination of the creative process. I do not attempt to make explicit links between their works, except loosely in the context of imagist theory and fictionalisation of memory. In the final chapter, I reflect on what I have learnt during my long journey towards becoming a poet, drawing together the common threads that best illustrate the various complexities of writing poetry, including the craftsmanship it requires. The collection of poems is divided into four sections with separate themes that sometimes overlap and engage with each other on different levels. The first section, Observations, centres on Virginia Woolf and traces key events in her life based on her letters and diaries. The second section, Telling the Bees, is an experiment in writing poetry with an autobiographical focus on family relationships, memories, loss and reconciliation. The third section, A Moon Calendar, is a sequence of twelve poems that chart the changing nature of the seasons through the archaic names for each full moon, taken from different cultures. Some of these poems also have an autobiographical reference. The final section, An Indifferent Camera, looks at our transitory relationships with the natural world, and concludes with a short series of poems inspired by photographs, paintings and artefacts