Changes in urban and environmental governance in Canterbury from 2010 to 2015: comparing Environment Canterbury and Christchurch City Council

This article compares the proximate but not parallel trajectories of Canterbury Regional Council’s (ECan) and the Christchurch City Council’s changing authority to manage the urban and natural environment from 2010 to 2015. We ask why the trajectories are so far from parallel, and speculate as to why the central government interventions were so different. The apparent mismatch between the justifications for the interventions and the interventions themselves reveals important implications on the national and local levels. Nationally, the mismatch speaks to the current debate over an overhaul of the Resource Management Act. Locally, it informs current discussions in Wellington, Nelson, Gisborne and elsewhere about amalgamating district and regional councils. • Ann Brower is a Senior Lecturer in Environmental Policy at Lincoln University. She holds a PhD from the University of California, Berkeley, and a master’s from Yale. Ike Kleynbos holds a Bachelor of Environmental Management and Planning degree from Lincoln University and is currently doing postgraduate studies at Lincoln

Does tenure review in New Zealand’s South Island give rise to rents?

Under “tenure review,” the ongoing privatization of South Island Crown pastoral leases, a pastoral lessee surrenders part of his leasehold, and acquires a freehold interest in the remainder. In order to determine whether the Crown sold the right to freehold too cheaply, we model the proportional difference between the price (per hectare) at which the Crown sold its interest to the lessee, and the prices paid to former lessees who have onsold some part of their new freeholds.tenure review; pastoral leases; New Zealand; rent seeking

Closing the deal: politics and economics of tenure review

Until 1992, land on the eastern slopes of New Zealand’s South Island was owned by the Crown and leased for pastoral sheep grazing. This land in Crown pastoral leases comprised 20% of the South Island, or 10% of NZ’s landmass. Since 1992, the pastoral leaseholders have been able to enter negotiations with the Crown to split the leased land – land below 1000m is privatised, whilst land with conservation values (usually above 1000m) shifts into public conservation land. The papers I will present use the theories of rents, bargaining, administrative politics, and public choice to examine financial outcomes from New Zealand land reform. Results are inconsistent with payments arising from a bargain in which both the Crown and lessee advocate to their full potential, and are instead consistent with the Crown backing down to lessees’ desires for a generous deal. This back-down stems either from 'bureaucratic coping', or from the addition of a bureaucratic middleman between the Crown principal and its negotiator subagent, exacerbating the principal-agent problem

Whither the Crown’s interest in South Island high country land reform?

The South Island high country has long been the subject of debate over resource use and ecological protection. Since early 2006, the ownership and relative value of property rights in high country pastoral leases have become controversial. This article reviews recent research (chiefly Brower (2006) and Brower, Monks and Meguire (in review)) on the law, politics and economics of land reform in the high country

The Relationship between Entrance Age and Academic Achievement in Literacy Skills for Kindergarten Students in a Rural School

Parents and teachers are faced with the difficult question of when to enroll their children in kindergarten to be the most academically successful in a rural area. Some parents have started enrolling children in kindergarten at the age of four, despite not being cognitively ready based on the information-processing theory. The purpose of this study is to determine the relationship between entrance age and the academic achievement of literacy skills for kindergarten students in a rural area. A correlational design was utilized to test the strength and direction of the relationship between two quantitative variables: age and reading achievement in a rural school district. A correlational design was appropriate for this study since in order to measure the degree and direction of the relationship between two or more variables and to explore the magnitude among variables. A scatter plot was used to determine the differences between the predictor variable, age, and criterion variable achievement in reading in a rural school district. The researcher failed to reject the null hypothesis. A total of 221 students participated in the research from three separate public schools in rural Virginia. The results of the study did not indicate a relationship between entrance age measured in months and academic achievement in literacy skills scores. Future research to include how age impacts kindergarten students in other demographic regions, with a larger sample size, would aid in further development of this research

Halting indigenous biodiversity decline: ambiguity, equity, and outcomes in RMA assessment of significance

In New Zealand, assessment of ‘significance’ is undertaken to give effect to a legal requirement for local authorities to provide for protection of significant sites under the Resource Management Act (1991). The ambiguity of the statute enables different interests to define significance according to their goals: vested interests (developers), local authorities, and non-vested interests in pursuit of protection of environmental public goods may advance different definitions. We examine two sets of criteria used for assessment of significance for biological diversity under the Act. Criteria adapted from the 1980s Protected Natural Areas Programme are inadequate to achieve the maintenance of biological diversity if ranking is used to identify only highest priority sites. Norton and Roper-Lindsay (2004) propose a narrow definition of significance and criteria that identify only a few high-quality sites as significant. Both sets are likely to serve the interests of developers and local authorities, but place the penalty of uncertainty on non-vested interests seeking to maintain biological diversity, and are likely to exacerbate the decline of biological diversity and the loss of landscape-scale processes required for its persistence. When adopting criteria for assessment of significance, we suggest local authorities should consider whose interests are served by different criteria sets, and who will bear the penalty of uncertainty regarding biological diversity outcomes. They should also ask whether significance criteria are adequate, and sufficiently robust to the uncertainty inherent in the assessment of natural values, to halt the decline of indigenous biological diversity

Gut Microbiome Dysbiosis in Antibiotic-Treated COVID-19 Patients is Associated with Microbial Translocation and Bacteremia

Although microbial populations in the gut microbiome are associated with COVID-19 severity, a causal impact on patient health has not been established. Here we provide evidence that gut microbiome dysbiosis is associated with translocation of bacteria into the blood during COVID-19, causing life-threatening secondary infections. We first demonstrate SARS-CoV-2 infection induces gut microbiome dysbiosis in mice, which correlated with alterations to Paneth cells and goblet cells, and markers of barrier permeability. Samples collected from 96 COVID-19 patients at two different clinical sites also revealed substantial gut microbiome dysbiosis, including blooms of opportunistic pathogenic bacterial genera known to include antimicrobial-resistant species. Analysis of blood culture results testing for secondary microbial bloodstream infections with paired microbiome data indicates that bacteria may translocate from the gut into the systemic circulation of COVID-19 patients. These results are consistent with a direct role for gut microbiome dysbiosis in enabling dangerous secondary infections during COVID-19

Comparative genomics of small RNA regulatory pathway components in vector mosquitoes

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Small RNA regulatory pathways (SRRPs) control key aspects of development and anti-viral defense in metazoans. Members of the Argonaute family of catalytic enzymes degrade target RNAs in each of these pathways. SRRPs include the microRNA, small interfering RNA (siRNA) and PIWI-type gene silencing pathways. Mosquitoes generate viral siRNAs when infected with RNA arboviruses. However, in some mosquitoes, arboviruses survive antiviral RNA interference (RNAi) and are transmitted via mosquito bite to a subsequent host. Increased knowledge of these pathways and functional components should increase understanding of the limitations of anti-viral defense in vector mosquitoes. To do this, we compared the genomic structure of SRRP components across three mosquito species and three major small RNA pathways.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The <it>Ae. aegypti, An. gambiae </it>and <it>Cx. pipiens </it>genomes encode putative orthologs for all major components of the miRNA, siRNA, and piRNA pathways. <it>Ae. aegypti </it>and <it>Cx. pipiens </it>have undergone expansion of Argonaute and PIWI subfamily genes. Phylogenetic analyses were performed for these protein families. In addition, sequence pattern recognition algorithms MEME, MDScan and Weeder were used to identify upstream regulatory motifs for all SRRP components. Statistical analyses confirmed enrichment of species-specific and pathway-specific cis-elements over the rest of the genome.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Analysis of Argonaute and PIWI subfamily genes suggests that the small regulatory RNA pathways of the major arbovirus vectors, <it>Ae. aegypti and Cx. pipiens</it>, are evolving faster than those of the malaria vector <it>An. gambiae </it>and <it>D. melanogaster</it>. Further, protein and genomic features suggest functional differences between subclasses of PIWI proteins and provide a basis for future analyses. Common UCR elements among SRRP components indicate that 1) key components from the miRNA, siRNA, and piRNA pathways contain NF-kappaB-related and Broad complex transcription factor binding sites, 2) purifying selection has occurred to maintain common pathway-specific elements across mosquito species and 3) species-specific differences in upstream elements suggest that there may be differences in regulatory control among mosquito species. Implications for arbovirus vector competence in mosquitoes are discussed.</p

When the law is silent, trespassers w... : law and power in implied property rights

When it comes to property, the law does not always rule.We looked at prices emerging from on-going and hotly contested bilateral exchange of property interests in land in New Zealand high country of the South Island.Does relative value of property rights exchanged drive prices? In other words, does an economic interpretation of the law drive prices?This question has two components: who owns what rights? What is the value of those rights?Empirical economics research is used to impute the value of the property rights, and four competing interpretations of the law are tested concerning ownership of property rights in this exchange.Found that none of the stated arguments about who holds which rights (and how much they’re worth) explains the observed pattern of prices.So we turned to dynamics of the negotiation, and other ideas of political economy to offer explanations of the prices