An analysis of the regional impact of the Kapuni ammonia / urea plant : a research report constituting two 14.499 Research Reports, in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Agricultural Business and Administration, Massey University

Successive post war governments in New Zealand have emphasised industrial development as the basis of economic growth. During this period national-level planning has become institutionalised. Central to the choice of planning policy for industrial development is the balance of payments problem. This has tended to mask other considerations which can be identified as pertinent to national and regional level decision making by private and public organisations . A major difficulty for the researcher is establishing which questions are relevant in a New Zealand context. This research exercise pursues the perspectives and questions which might be brought to bear on specific national development projects. The research focuses on the Kapuni Amronia/urea plant and analyses the regional impact of that project

Charting and Navigating the Scylla and Charybdis Conundrum of our Ageing Hearts - Heart Failure & Atrial Fibrillation

Residing on opposite sides of the Strait of Messina between Sicily and Calabria, Scylla and Charybdis were mythical sea monsters (one a fearsome creature, the other a deadly whirlpool) described by Homer. For anyone seeking to navigate that narrow and treacherous passage, avoid one of these lethal threats and you would be devoured by the other. For many populations around the world, the conundrum of successfully preventing and/or treating heart failure (HF) to increase longevity, only to increase the probability that it will increase the number of people living with and dying from atrial fibrillation (AF), represents a conundrum of Scylla and Charybdis dimensions. So how did this happen? In the late 20th Century, heart disease was characterised by a predominance of middle-aged men suffering often fatal acute coronary events. However, this pattern began to change due to the combination of two key factors. Firstly, in high-income countries at least, there were increasingly successful attempts to prevent and treat acute coronary events (thereby reducing premature mortality rates). Secondly, the vanguard of the Post- War Baby Boomer generation had reached their sixth decade of life, with more to come. Thus, more people were living longer with an ageing/damaged heart and those numbers would inevitably rise. The first manifestation of this phenomenon was an increasing number of HF cases (well before a noticeable increase in AF cases). This mandated increasing recognition that HF was a discrete physical entity/syndrome that needed to be more widely recognised. This trend (rising HF cases) meant that the main burden of heart disease was shifting from the fifth/sixth decade of life with a male predominance, to the seventh/eighth decade of life affecting both men and women. Unless urgently addressed, it seemed clear that HF cases would overwhelm future health care services. At this point in time, AF attracted far less scrutiny because case numbers remained low. However, fuelled by the inevitable wave of ageing Baby Boomers, combined with successful attempts to prolong the lives of those affected by “earlier” forms of heart disease (including HF), it was inevitable, therefore, that more people would be successfully reaching their eight/ninth decade of life. Thus, the perfect “recipe” for a rising tide of AF had emerged. So does every individual face a Scylla and Charybdis choice between HF and AF – of course not! However, as a society in successfully recognising and treating a rising epidemic of HF, we inevitably fuelled (as some of us were predicting) a consequential epidemic of AF. In simple terms, unless we could “cure” heart disease – we had no choice in a classical Scylla and Charybdis conundrum, by solving/avoiding one problem and then creating/running into, another. Thus, as with HF 10-20 years earlier, AF has since challenged health care systems to cope with the demands it places on all healthcare services. Concurrent to the rise of AF, HF now represents a sustained threat to the heart health of successfully ageing populations worldwide (creating a “twin epidemic”), with AF and HF often occurring in the same person. It is within this context, that this thesis describes two closely related portfolios of research (comprising \u3e100 primary and topic-related, original reports) that were instrumental in – 1) Describing the evolving burden of disease imposed by HF and AF, 2) Developing targeted, multidisciplinary management programs with the capacity to simultaneously reduce the risk of recurrent hospitalisation and prolong the lives of vulnerable people affected by one or both of these deadly/disabling conditions, and 3) Considering their broader impact in vulnerable/disadvantaged communities and regions of the world (from Central Australia to Sub-Saharan Africa). In addition to describing how this portfolio of research represents a cogent investigation of two critical aspects of HF and AF (i.e., what is the pattern of disease and how can its impact from an individual to societal perspective be attenuated?), this thesis outlines the concrete impact these research reports have made in our collective awareness, understanding and response to them. My own (small) contribution to this field of research includes a series of important studies generating new knowledge (e.g., the prognostic impact and economic burden of HF and AF) and trials of HF and AF management that have directly influenced the provision and design of new health programs and services. Consistent with this impact, the 33 original research studies presented in this thesis have attracted \u3e100 individual citations in Expert Clinical Guidelines/Consensus Reports over the last 20 years

Heart failure nursing in Australia: Challenges, strengths, and opportunities

Australia has a land mass similar to the United States of America, supporting a population of just over 20 million, which is distributed predominantly across the coastal perimeter. The Australian society is rich in cultural diversity fostered by decades of migration. Both these factors present challenges for health care. First, because resources are scare in rural and remote regions, health outcomes are poorer in these regions, especially among indigenous populations. Second, the cultural diversity of Australians is a challenge to providing evidence-based treatment recommendations. In Australia, in parallel with international trends, there is a strong association between socioeconomic status, chronic conditions, and health outcomes

Investigating the structure of the autism-spectrum quotient using Mokken scaling

Traits similar to those shown in autism spectrum condition (ASC) are apparent in relatives of individuals with ASC, and in the general population without necessarily meeting diagnostic criteria for an ASC. We assess whether the Autism-Spectrum Quotient (AQ), a self-report measure, has hierarchical properties using Mokken scaling. Hierarchical scales allow the presence of a latent trait to be identified by discovering whether and how many specific items form an ordered array along it. Data were collected from 2 groups: (1) people with ASC (n = 449: 240 males, 209 females, M age 35.4 years, SD = 12.8) and (2) university students (n = 943: 465 males, 475 females, M age = 23.0 years, SD = 8.4). A single Mokken scale was obtained in the data from university students and 3 scales were obtained in the data from people with ASC. The scales all showed moderate Mokken scaling properties with the single scale obtained from university students showing weak invariant item ordering and 2 of the scales from people with ASC showing weak invariant item ordering. The AQ formed reliable Mokken scales. There was a large overlap between the scale from the university student sample and the sample with ASC, with the first scale, relating to social interaction, being almost identical. The present study confirms the utility of the AQ as a single instrument that can dimensionalize autistic traits in both university student and clinical samples of ASC, and confirms that items of the AQ are consistently ordered relative to one another

Links between parental life histories of wild salmon and the telomere lengths of their offspring

The importance of parental contributions to offspring development and subsequent performance is self-evident at a genomic level; however, parents can also affect offspring fitness by indirect genetic and environmental routes. The life history strategy that an individual adopts will be influenced by both genes and environment; and this may have important consequences for offspring. Recent research has linked telomere dynamics (i.e. telomere length and loss) in early life to future viability and longevity. Moreover, a number of studies have reported a heritable component to telomere length across a range of vertebrates, though the effects of other parental contribution pathways have been far less studied. By using wild Atlantic salmon with different parental life histories in an experimental split-brood IVF mating design and rearing the resulting families under standardised conditions, we show that there can be significant links between parental life history and offspring telomere length (studied at the embryo and fry stage). Maternal life history traits, in particular egg size, were most strongly related to offspring telomere length at the embryonic stage, but then became weaker through development. In contrast, paternal life history traits, such as the father's growth rate in early life, had a greater association in the later stages of offspring development. However, offspring telomere length was not significantly related to either maternal or paternal age at reproduction, nor to paternal sperm telomere length. This study demonstrates both the complexity and the importance of parental factors that can influence telomere length in early life

Expression in Escherichia coli of fragments of the coiled-coil rod domain of rabbit myosin: influence of different regions of the molecule on aggregation and paracrystal formation

We have expressed in Escherichia coli a cDNA clone corresponding broadly to rabbit light meromyosin (LMM) together with a number of modified polypeptides and have used this material to investigate the role of different aspects of molecular structure on the solubility properties of LMM. The expressed material was characterized biochemically and structurally to ensure that it retained the coiled-coil conformation of the native molecule. Full-length recombinant LMM retained the general solubility properties of myosin and, although soluble at high ionic strength, precipitated when the ionic strength was reduced below 0.3 M. Constructs in which the ‘skip’ residues (that disrupt the coiled-coil heptad repeat) were deleted had solubility properties indistinguishable from the wild type, which indicated that the skip residues did not play a major role in determining the molecular interactions involved in assembly. Deletions from the N terminus of LMM did not alter the solubility properties of the expressed material, but deletion of 92 residues from the C terminus caused a large increase in solubility at low ionic strength, indicating that a determinant important for interaction between LMM molecules was located in this region. The failure of deletions from the molecule's N terminus to alter its solubility radically suggested that the periodic variation of charge along the myosin rod may not be as important as proposed for determining the strength of binding between molecules and thus the solubility of myosin

Molecular basis of myosin assembly: coiled-coil interactions and the role of charge periodicities

Complementation of alternating zones of positive and negative charge in the myosin rod enables molecules to interact in a number of ways. This accounts for the complexity of the molecular organisation of thick filaments. However, directed mutagenesis of expressed LMM cDNA indicated that charge zone complementation is not a major driving force in myosin polymerisation. Instead, it probably serves to prevent unfavourable interaction geometries