State failure in the South Pacific and its implications for New Zealand security policy : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Philosophy in Defence Studies at Massey University

The concept of state failure is complex, encompassing many aspects of the decline in a state, from its institutional and political capacities, to its social cohesion and economic performance. In the South Pacific, the term "failing" has been used to describe the Solomon Islands before the regional assistance mission RAMSI intervened. Its continued use to describe other countries in the region, such as Papua New Guinea or Fiji is controversial, mainly because the states of the South Pacific are generally considered much more peaceful than those in other regions labelled failing. Importantly, the geographical nature of the region itself provides a vastly different strategic context to African and European failing states which are often situated in landlocked geographies. It follows on that if Pacific Island states do experience aspects of failure (as opposed to being completely collapsed or failed) then their incapacities would breed unique security implications for the South Pacific region. This thesis aims to discern what those implications are for New Zealand policy in the South Pacific region. The method used will be to assess seven countries (Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, the Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu, and Vanuatu) and their degree to which they measure up against twelve indicators of state failure. These indicators have been borrowed from the Fund for Peace's annual Failed States Index (with their permission) and they provide the structure for the assessment

The Origin, Succession, and Predicted Metabolism of Bacterial Communities Associated with Leaf Decomposition.

Intraspecific variation in plant nutrient and defensive traits can regulate ecosystem-level processes, such as decomposition and transformation of plant carbon and nutrients. Understanding the regulatory mechanisms of ecosystem functions at local scales may facilitate predictions of the resistance and resilience of these functions to change. We evaluated how riverine bacterial community assembly and predicted gene content corresponded to decomposition rates of green leaf inputs from red alder trees into rivers of Washington State, USA. Previously, we documented accelerated decomposition rates for leaves originating from trees growing adjacent to the site of decomposition versus more distant locales, suggesting that microbes have a "home-field advantage" in decomposing local leaves. Here, we identified repeatable stages of bacterial succession, each defined by dominant taxa with predicted gene content associated with metabolic pathways relevant to the leaf characteristics and course of decomposition. "Home" leaves contained bacterial communities with distinct functional capacities to degrade aromatic compounds. Given known spatial variation of alder aromatics, this finding helps explain locally accelerated decomposition. Bacterial decomposer communities adjust to intraspecific variation in leaves at spatial scales of less than a kilometer, providing a mechanism for rapid response to changes in resources such as range shifts among plant genotypes. Such rapid responses among bacterial communities in turn may maintain high rates of carbon and nutrient cycling through aquatic ecosystems.IMPORTANCE Community ecologists have traditionally treated individuals within a species as uniform, with individual-level biodiversity rarely considered as a regulator of community and ecosystem function. In our study system, we have documented clear evidence of within-species variation causing local ecosystem adaptation to fluxes across ecosystem boundaries. In this striking pattern of a "home-field advantage," leaves from individual trees tend to decompose most rapidly when immediately adjacent to their parent tree. Here, we merge community ecology experiments with microbiome approaches to describe how bacterial communities adjust to within-species variation in leaves over spatial scales of less than a kilometer. The results show that bacterial community compositional changes facilitate rapid ecosystem responses to environmental change, effectively maintaining high rates of carbon and nutrient cycling through ecosystems

Letter to the Editor

A reply to a point made by Andrew Lazo in his essay in Mythlore #130 about Lewis’s comments on T.S. Eliot’s The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

Short-term changes in amino acid pool of neurospora mycelium

Short-term changes in amino acid poo

Radiation damage in advanced materials for next generation nuclear power plants

The ageing state of the world's nuclear power infrastructure, and the need to reduce humanity s dependency on fossil fuels, requires that this electrical energy generating capacity is replaced. Economic factors, and its physical and chemical properties, make high purity iron-chromium binary alloys a strong candidate for use in the construction of the pressure vessels of the next generation of nuclear reactors. This relatively inexpensive metal retains the oxidation resistance property of so-called stainless steel alloys, and has demonstrated dimensional stability and low degradation under harsh experimental environments of temperature and radiation. In this work, we consider radiation induced interstitial damage to the atomic lattices of iron-chromium binary alloys using the atomistic modelling methods, Molecular Dynamics and Adaptive Kinetic Monte Carlo, simulating collision cascade sequences, and the migration of defects in the aftermath. Variations in chromium content does not effect the initial damage production in terms of the number of Frenkel pairs produced, but iron and chromium atoms are not evenly distributed in defect atoms with respect to the bulk concentration. In simulations conducted at low temperature, chromium is under-represented, and at high temperature, a greater proportion of interstitial atoms are chromium than in the lattice overall. The latter phenomena is most strongly pronounced in systems of low bulk chromium content. During the simulation of post-cascade defect migration, interstitials atoms are observed to form temporary clusters and vacancies align along adjacent lattice sites, with the two types of defect also migrating to annihilate by recombination. Calculating the energy spectra of cascade events corresponding to an example experimental configuration using the SRIM package, we investigated the evolution of lattice systems in which a sequence of multiple cascade events occurred, both with and without a physically representative time gap between events. These simulations gave us the opportunity to observe the behaviour of cascades in the proximity of damage remaining from previous events, such as the promotion of defect clustering when this occurs

Treatment barriers, preferences and histories of individuals with symptoms of body dysmorphic disorder.

BackgroundIndividuals with mental health concerns face many barriers when accessing psychological treatment. Even when patients overcome these barriers, they often do not receive an evidence-based treatment. Although the current literature highlights these issues clearly across psychological disorders, the research is limited in relation to body dysmorphic disorder (BDD).AimThe aim of this study was to examine psychological treatment barriers, treatment delivery preferences and treatment histories of individuals with symptoms of BDD.MethodA total of 122 participants with clinically significant BDD symptoms (94% female; mean age = 34.19 years, SD = 10.86) completed the cross-sectional study.ResultsThe most frequently reported barriers to accessing psychological treatment for individuals with BDD symptoms were the cost of treatment (41%) and the belief that the symptoms did not warrant treatment (36%). Although 69% of treatment-seeking participants reported previously receiving cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) for BDD, only 13% of participants appeared to receive best-practice CBT. The preferred modality of future psychological treatment delivery was face-to-face treatment with a therapist once a week (63%), rather than accelerated or remote treatment approaches.ConclusionsThe study suggests that there are significant barriers to accessing CBT for BDD. Reducing these barriers, as well as increasing consumer mental health literacy, is required to improve treatment access and treatment outcomes for individuals with BDD

Social Economics.

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Guest Editors' Preface: The International Conference on Ultrashort High-Energy Radiation and Matter

The International Conference on "Ultrashort High-Energy Radiation and Matter" has been held in Villa Monastero, Varenna, Italy, during October 7–10, 2003. The conference has been jointly organized by the "Piero Caldirola" International Centre for the Promotion of Science and International School of Plasma Physics, Milan, Italy, and by the FEMTO Programme of the European Science Foundation (chaired by Prof. Charles Joachain of the University of Bruxelles)