Uncertain opportunities: Chinese investors establishing investments in New Zealand

Abstract: Despite the signing of a comprehensive free trade agreement between New Zealand and China and significantly deepening trade relations, there exists a discernable lag in the investment relationship between the two countries. This paper identifies that the operation and interaction of the two legal instruments governing the conditions of entry of Chinese foreign direct investment (FDI) into New Zealand – the New Zealand–China Free Trade Agreement (NZCFTA) and the New Zealand Overseas Investment Act 2005 – partially explain this disparity. These legal instruments offer an interesting illustration of the way in which international investment agreements (IIAs) interact with domestic law, managing the contention between investor rights and host state public interests. However, it is clear that the rights and obligations created by these legal instruments are not well understood by Chinese investors and New Zealand commentators alike, as illustrated by the recent Crafar farms saga. This paper seeks to clarify those rights and obligations, arguing that greater transparency and predictability in the operation of the legal instruments is necessary in order to encourage higher levels of Chinese FDI in New Zealand. This is particularly important in the New Zealand– China relationship as Chinese investors are still relative newcomers in the establishment of overseas investments and face in New Zealand a culturally different regulatory scheme from that operating in China

CO chemisorption on Ir(111)

The adsorption of carbon monoxide on the (111) crystallographic orientation of iridium both at and below room temperature has been investigated using both low‐energy electron diffraction (LEED) and thermal desorption mass spectrometry. At room temperature, CO adsorbs rapidly resulting in the appearance of a faint (√3×√3) R30° LEED pattern after only approximately 1.3×10^(−6) Torr s (1.72×10^(−4) Pa s) exposure. Upon further exposure to CO, the intensity of the overlayer LEED beams initially increases, but then decreases passing through a maximum at an exposure of approximately 2.4×10^(−6) Torr s (3.2×10^(−4) Pa s). By an exposure of 10^(−5) Torr s (1.3×10^(−3) Pa s) each of the (rather dim and diffuse) overlayer beams has split into two beams. These beams then move toward the substrate beams with increasing CO surface coverage, until near saturation coverage the angle between the split overlayer beams subtended at the (00) beam is greater than 30°

Facing up to Facebook: politicians, publics and the social media(ted) turn in New Zealand

Social media have an increasingly important place in the lives of citizens, and their potential to expand the reach of communication messages beyond individual networks is attractive to those looking to maximise message efficiency. The influence of Facebook in Obama’s 2008 campaign success galvanised many politicians into taking it seriously as a campaign tool. Our study explored the Facebook wall posts (1148 in total) of New Zealand Members of Parliament (MPs) leading up to the 2011 general election to determine posting behaviours and differences. Among other things, we found that women posted more frequently than men and that Labour MPs posted more than their National counterparts. Additionally, most politicians do not invite dialogue with readers of their posts, rarely get involved in comment threads and mostly take a monologic approach, using Facebook as a way of broadcasting information rather than as a medium enabling two-way flow. In other words, same old, same old

Final report of work-with-IT: the JISC study into evolution of working practices

Technology is increasingly being used to underpin business processes across teaching and learning, research, knowledge exchange and business support activities in both HE and FE. The introduction of technology has a significant impact on the working practices of staff, often requiring them to work in a radically different way. Change in any situation can be unsettling and problematic and, where not effectively managed, can lead to poor service or functionality and disenfranchised staff. These issues can have a direct impact on institutional effectiveness, reputation and the resulting student experience. The Work-with-IT project, based at the University of Strathclyde, sought to examine changes to working practices across HE and FE, the impact on staff roles and relationships and the new skills sets that are required to meet these changes

What is being conveyed to health professionals and consumers through web and print sources of nutrition information?

Nutrition misinformation can be harmful. Within dietetics there is an acknowledgement that nutrition information should be consistent, science-based and made relevant to different segments of the population. This paper reports on a study, conducted in Scotland, which involved focus groups and interviews with consumers and health professionals to explore messages relating to a healthy diet and to starchy foods and foods high in fat or sugar in particular. The research also involved a discourse analysis of articles aimed at health professionals and consumers. Evidence based, clearly written web and print articles were not the norm. Many articles contained value-laden messages and inconsistent or unclear advice. Nutrition information was rarely contextualized for consumers to help them incorporate the advice into their daily lives. Consumers and health professionals reported feeling 'bombarded' by messages about diet, which was sometimes confusing. There is considerable scope for improving nutrition messaging in Scotland.Peer reviewe

Teaching in real time : a pedagogical analysis of the dynamic structuring of interactive subject matter discourse in the classrooms of student teachers on teaching practice

It would be difficult to overstate the complexity of the task a student teacher undertakes when she assumes responsibility for teaching her subject to a class during teaching practice. Vet, while issues surrounding teaching practice - such as the attitudes of trainees and their socialization - have frequently been studied (Zeichner, 1986a; Wragg,1982; Al-Hidabi, 1986), it is only recently that the actual classroom teaching of student teachers has attracted much sustained research attention (see, for example, Feiman-Nemser & Buchmann, 1986a, b, c; Leinhardt & Greeno, 1986; Bork & Livingstone, 1989). Consequently, little is known in detail about what students do, moment by moment, while engaging in the key practical component of their professional training. Considering that teaching practice - variously called the practicum, field experience, professional experience, teaching rounds, and so on - plays an essential part in all schemes of training (Collins, 1982), that training institutions in general have tended to increase the proportion of time devoted to school experience (Furlong, et al., 1988) and that students have frequently been found to view the practicum as the most valuable aspect of their course (Feiman-Nemser, 1983; Turney et al., 1985), the fact that the teaching of student teachers has been so little studied appears somewhat anomalous. This situation contrasts markedly with what is known about leaching in general from studies of experienced teachers. Research into the cognitive aspects of pedagogy has revealed something of the manifold complexities inherent in teaching. Thus the teacher may be viewed as a reflective professional who demonstrates 'knowledge-in- action' (Schon, 1983). Similar conceptions underlie perspectives which focus variously upon 'teacher decision making (Calderhead, 1980), 'teacher's craft knowledge' (McNamara & Desforges, 1978; Desforges & MacNamara,1979), or 'the knowledge base for teaching' (Shulman, 1986a, 1967). Drawing from such overlapping viewpoints, a composite picture of teaching emerges. Interacting with, say, thirty disparate individuals, who comprise the pupils in her care, the teacher engages in activities designed to illuminate her subject (Shulman, 1990). Her action is based on rapid and intricate discriminations among a multiplicity of overlapping events which often pass with bewildering speed (Doyle, 1986). She must simultaneously manage both the social order in the classroom and the development of academic work, and, where there is conflict between these twin goals, the former concern often seems to be accorded priority (Carter & Doyle, 1987). Thus the teacher's action seems designed to ensure that orderly states of activity are initiated and sustained (Brown & McIntyre,1989). An additional aspect of the teacher's action, which pervades the classroom, is the way she improvises pedagogical language, in an interactive setting, in an attempt to disclose subject matter knowledge (Erickson, 1982). The teacher also possesses an awareness of the differential abilities of pupils in the class and seeks to involve them in appropriate ways (Calderhead, 1980). Yet all her pedagogical action may be orchestrated into a seamless performance of such skill that its intricacy can easily be overlooked by an observer (McNamara, 1980). Thus it would appear that if teaching practice is conceived as an opportunity for learning through attempting to emulate what experienced teachers do, the student faces a central difficulty: much of the professional activity teachers engage in is not directly observable (Feiman-Nemser & Buchmann, 1986a, b, c). The student teacher may view the overt actions of a co-operating teacher, but she is not privy to the professional discriminations which inform these actions. Nor have teachers, in common with other professionals, been found to be naturally able to be explicit about their expertise in this regard (Berliner, 1986; McIntyre et el., 1988). And the student suffers still other disadvantages. Salient among these is the fact that she has to teach pupils she is barely acquainted with. Thus she does not possess the knowledge of the class, built up over many dozens of hours of interaction, that the co-operating teacher has, and so is likely to be hesitant in interpreting pupil behaviour. Nor does she have the store of knowledge, built up from years of exposure to other pupils and classes, that the experienced teacher may fall back on when she encounters a new class (Wragg & Wood, 1984). Similarly, while she may be enthused by her subject, she does not have the pedagogical knowledge of the subject matter that the experienced teacher will have accumulated (Shulman,1987). For instance, she is unlikely to know accurately what may be expected of pupils of different ages and abilities. Nor will she be keenly aware of the common misunderstandings that may need to be guarded against when she introduces pupils to a particular topic. Neither will she possess a store of useful analogies for explaining certain concepts, and so on (see, Shulman, 1986a, 1990; Wilson, et al. 1986)

A new compact neutron spectrometer

A new compact neutron spectrometer has been designed, developed and characterized. The detector is based on EJ299-33 plastic scintillator coupled to silicon photomultipliers, and a digital implementation of pulse shape discrimination is used to separate events associated with neutrons from those associated with gamma-rays. The spectrometer is suitable over the neutron energy range 1 – 100 MeV, and the development illustrated with measurements made using an Am-Be radioisotopic source, a D-T sealed tube neutron generator and quasi-monoenergetic neutron beams produced using the iThemba LABS cyclotron. A segmented variation of the spectrometer is capable of providing directional information through the comparison of count rates between scintillator cells

Das Nachleben des Antipassivs: Alignment-Verschiebung und Transitivität

Three examples are presented of reanalyses of antipassives as or in the direction of ordinary transitive constructions, from Tsez, Chukchi, and Mayan languages. In all cases, an antipassive construction remains in the language or language family concerned, thus presenting empirical evidence of reanalysis to parallel earlier hypothesized reconstructions of antipassives to explain synchronic idiosyncrasiesDie folgende Untersuchung erörtert drei Beispiele einer Reanalyse von Antipassiven als oder in Richtung einer üblichen transitiven Konstruktion, und zwar in der tsesischen, der tschuktschischen und den mayanischen Sprachen. In allen Beispielen bleibt das Antipassiv in der jeweiligen Sprache bzw. der jeweiligen Sprachfamilie erhalten, was einen empirischen Beweis für die Reanalyse neben früher hypothetisch aufgestellten Rekonstruktionen des Antipassivs als Erklärung von synchronischen Eigenarten bietet