Intermarriage : its role and importance within early New Zealand shore whaling stations : a thesis in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in History at Massey University

Early contact history in New Zealand involved many hard working rugged European men who came to our shores to work as sealers, flax and timber traders as well as whalers, and their interaction with Māori who lived in and visited the areas which they frequented. It is the last of these men, the whalers who provide the context for this thesis. School history lessons and general New Zealand history books generally discuss whaling within New Zealand waters. Some provide enough information to give their audience a general understanding of some aspects of New Zealand's whaling history, while others contain so little that one might think that whaling had no impact on New Zealand's past. However this is not true; whaling had a significant impact in New Zealand's past and this impact has continued through to our contemporary society. Whaling had many consequences within early nineteenth century New Zealand, including the introduction of new commodities to Māori, such as tobacco, clothing, European tools and muskets which would all, to some extent, begin to change their traditional way of life. Interaction between whalers and local Māori brought on cultural changes. This interaction came in many forms, often through trade, but also the relationships between Māori women and European whalers. It is these relationships which are the focus of this thesis. Relationships between Māori women and European whalers started occurring when whaling ships began calling on New Zealand shores at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Often these relationships involved only fleeting encounters, but still they were the beginning of a trend which would, within the next forty years, see many shore whalers legally marry Māori women. This thesis deals with shore whalers who began to arrive in New Zealand during the late 1820s rather than the earlier deep sea whalers who called on Kororareka in the Bay of Islands. While deep sea whalers were the first to form relationships with Māori women they were in many respects different to shore whalers. Shore whalers were required to stay on shore for months at a time as opposed to a few days like deep sea whalers this meant they required different things from Māori they interacted with. This thesis will look at the relationships and marriages between European shore whalers from various locations along New Zealand's coastline and local women from the late 1820s through to 1845, discussing their role and importance within early New Zealand whaling stations

A series of realist evaluations of multi-component programmes with disengaged young people: What works, for whom, and in what contexts?

Periods spent in the absence of education, employment, or training (NEET) are associated with adverse psychological wellbeing, poverty, social marginalisation, criminal behaviour, and premature mortality. As such, implementing effective programmes to re-engage young people who are classified, or are at risk of becoming classified, as NEET is of great importance to these individuals, family, and society more broadly. To this end, the aim of the current thesis was to conduct three realist evaluations to understand how and under which circumstances multi-component programmes may impact the engagement, behavioural, and psychosocial outcomes of disengaged students and young people who are not in education, employment, or training. Study 1 consisted of a realist evaluation of a six-month multi-component programme for year ten (aged 14-15 years) disengaged students across three schools. In Study 2, the findings and refined programme theories from Study 1 were subsequently tested through a 10-week multi-component programme with disengaged year eight (aged 12-13 years) students and evaluated over ten months. Informed by the findings from the first two studies, the final study comprised the development, implementation, and evaluation of a four-week multi-component programme utilising appreciative inquiry as a theoretical framework to re-engage young people (aged 17-23 years) who were outside of education, employment, and training. Overall, the findings from the three studies highlighted the potential benefits of utilising a multi-component programme to re-engage young people. Specifically, context-mechanism-outcome configurations and refined programme theories relating to the development of trust, positions of authority, the power of collective experience, exploration of possible life directions, active learning, deviant peer contagion, and the reinforcement and enactment of hegemonic masculine identities were developed. Collectively, the results provide a detailed and practical understanding of the architecture of programmes that can benefit disengaged young people and help advance the implementation of future programmes for working with disengaged populations

Spinning New Yarns: an oral history and dialect study of the West Yorkshire textiles industry

The textiles and clothing industries helped to shape the identity of the West Yorkshire area in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and were major sources of employment. This study examines the changing status of the industries in the area, the consequences of their rise and decline for those who worked in them, and to what extent a worker’s role in the trades influenced their sociolect and idiolect, with a focus on local vocabulary and grammatical features. Two corpora of oral history interviews with former mill and clothing factory workers, five from the Leeds Archive of Vernacular Culture which were conducted in the 1980s, and eleven conducted by the researcher in 2018, formed the study’s primary data source. The pre-existing and new datasets were compared in order to track the progression of the industries over the course of the twentieth century, and to assess if they could provide any evidence of linguistic change. The project has an interdisciplinary focus, combining oral history with linguistics in its approach to the fieldwork and data analysis. The dense and multiplex network ties created by the industries had consequences for the identity and idiolect of the speakers in both corpora, with the study finding some evidence of trade-specific vocabulary. Analysing the interview data at the level of individual speakers highlights the importance of going beyond abstract patterns of language-use based on broad demographic categories, taking into account social networks, rapport and speaker attitudes. This study suggests that the industries’ affiliation with the area endures despite their decline in recent decades. Although the dense social network ties formed through the trades have been severed, some speakers still maintain friendships made in the mills and clothing factories

Measuring vowel percepts in human listeners with behavioral response-triggered averaging

A vowel can be largely defined by the frequencies of its first two formants, but the absolute frequencies for a given vowel vary from talker to talker and utterance to utterance. Given this variability, it is unclear what criteria listeners use to identify vowels. To estimate the vowel features for which people listen, we adapted a noise-based reverse-correlation method from auditory neurophysiological studies and vision research (Gold et al., 1999). Listeners presented with the stimulus, which had a random spectrum with levels in 60 frequency bins changing every 0.5 s, were asked to press a key whenever they heard the vowels [a] or [i:]. Reverse-correlation was used to average the spectrum of the noise prior to each key press, thus estimating the features of the vowels for which the participants were listening. The formant frequencies of these reverse-correlated vowels were similar to those of their respective whispered vowels. The success of this response-triggered technique suggests that it may prove useful for estimating other internal representations, including perceptual phenomena like tinnitus. References: Gold, J., Bennett, P. J., and Sekuler, A. B. (1999). “Identification of band-pass filtered faces and letters by human and ideal observers,” Vis. Res. 39(21), 3537–3560

Heat waves, droughts, and preferences for environmental policy

Using data from a new household survey on environmental attitudes, behaviors, and policy preferences, we find that current weather conditions affect preferences for environmental regulation. Individuals who have recently experienced extreme weather (heat waves or droughts) are more likely to support laws to protect the environment even if it means restricting individual freedoms. We find evidence that the channel through which weather conditions affect policy preference is via perceptions of the importance of the issue of global warming. Furthermore, individuals who may be more sophisticated consumers of news are less likely to have their attitudes towards global warming changed by current weather conditions.environmental regulation; global warming; environmental attitudes

The internal representation of vowel spectra investigated using behavioral response-triggered averaging

Listeners presented with noise were asked to press a key 13 whenever they heard the vowels [a] or [i:]. The noise had a random spectrum, with levels in 60 frequency bins changing every 0.5 s. Reverse correlation was used to average the spectrum of the noise prior to each key press, thus estimating the features of the vowels for which the participants were listening. The formant frequencies of these reverse-correlated vowels were similar to those of their respective whispered vowels. The success of this response-triggered technique suggests that it may prove useful for estimating other internal representations, including perceptual phenomena like tinnitus

Executive Summary: Evaluation of the MacArthur Foundation's Human Rights and International Justice Grantmaking in Nigeria 2000-2012

The MacArthur Foundation commissioned Itad to conduct an evaluation of the Foundation's Human Rights and International Justice (HRIJ) grant?making program in Nigeria between 2000 and 2012. During this period, the Foundation supported 102 HRIJ projects with an end?date in 2000 or later, for a total grant amount of US$23,945,010. The projects broadly fell within the following thematic categories:- Accountability of democratic institutions, including the police- Justice: legal and judicial reform, including international justice standards - Protection and promotion of human rightsThe evaluation was commissioned to seek answers to the following questions: - Approach and strategy: o What has changed in the wider Nigerian HRIJ landscape in Nigeria since 2000? o What was the Foundation's HRIJ grantmaking strategy in Nigeria over this time? o How has the Foundation responded to change in the wider environment? o How has the implementation of grants contributed to strategic aims? - Impact: o What have been the main results of the Foundation's investments? o What was the Foundation's primary contribution to Nigeria HRIJ issues? o What lessons can be drawn for future HRIJ grantmaking in Nigeria

Bumblebee ecophysiology: assessing the impacts of climate change and pesticide use on Bombus terrestris audax and B. t. dalmatinus

Climate change is altering the phenology of bumblebees in parts of the UK, with worker activity recorded during winter. This presents a unique set of physiological challenges to bumblebees, as they are typically exposed to exclusively summer conditions. The aim of this thesis was to assess the capacity for winter activity and survival in the UK-native bumblebee $Bombus$ $terrestris$ $audax$ (Harris, 1780) (Hymenoptera: Apidae) and the commercially imported $B.$ $t.$ $dalmatinus$ Dalla Torre, 1882 (Hymenoptera: Apidae). Cold tolerance assessments indicated that both subspecies were physiologically ill-adapted to winter temperatures. However, both species were found to undergo Rapid Cold Hardening (RCH); the first evidence of RCH in Hymenoptera. Thermal activity thresholds (CTmin, chill coma and chill coma recovery) were significantly lower in $B.$ $t.$ $audax$ than $B.$ $t.$ $dalmatinus$. However, only $B.$ $t.$ $dalmatinus$ was able to lower these thresholds as a result of acclimation. This highlights the potential for competition between the subspecies. Field experiments showed a lack of winter-active bumblebees in Birmingham, and an inability of commercial colonies to survive winter. Finally, this thesis presents the first evidence to suggest that sublethal neonicotinoid exposures impair bumblebee activity at low temperatures. Results are discussed in the light of climate change, pesticide use and the bumblebee pollinators in future climate scenarios

Improving Employer Outcomes: Supervised Learning to Predict Hiring Success

Worcester Polytechnic InstituteÂs (WPI) Career Development Center (CDC) wishes to understand what activities are most influential to a companyÂs success in hiring talent from WPI.NOur team analyzed data provided by the CDC about online job postings, on-campus interviews, information sessions, and career fair attendance along with information about student outcomes after graduation to determine what contributed most significantly to employers success. Because we wanted to be fair to companies in our predictions, we decided to minimize mean squared relative (percent) error, rather than traditional mean squared error. This required us to develop a regression tree completely from scratch to then use in random forest regression