Toppling the Past?:

This article explores some of the recent debates over statues, memorials and cultures of commemoration in New Zealand. These 'statue wars' are particularly focused on explorers, military men, colonial governors, and even Queen Victoria herself, figures who are seen as being deeply implicated in the production of the persistent inequalities and pain that has resulted from colonialism and empire. My analysis particularly focuses on the city of Tūranga/Gisborne, James Cook's first landing place in New Zealand and a location where there has a sequence of heated debates over Cook's legacies and a series of attacks on statues of the navigator. It explores three ways in which the city's landscape of memory has been reshaped: the removal of a contentious 1969 statue, the creative redevelopment of a long-standing historic reserve, and the erection of a statue to a key Ngāti Oneone tupuna (ancestor). This discussion particularly highlights the work and arguments of the Ngāti Oneone historian and artist, Nick Tupara. The final section of the essay turns to the author's own location - Ōtepoti/Dunedin - and offers a reading of debates over statues in that city, underlining the pivotal importance of indigenous perspectives on history and public space

« Renaissance orientale » dans le Pacifique: orientalisme, langue et ethnogenese dans le Pacifique britannique

This paper suggests that the “Oriental Renaissance” was a crucial, often overlooked, thread in the intellectual life of the Australasian colonies. British imperial networks, together with the circulation of learned periodicals and monographs, ensured that British Orientalism profoundly shaped the intellectual culture of nineteenth century New Zealand and that it was particularly prominent in debates over the origins and identity of Maori. Linguistic comparison provided the most important evidence for establishing the relationships between and the ultimate origins of the peoples of the Pacific. Many scholars attempted to establish that Maori belonged to the Indo-European family and that their origins could be traced back to north India while the others suggested that Maori culture was too primitive to be “Aryan” and that it exhibited greater affinities with the Dravidian cultures of South India. Ultimately these conflicting positions were synthesised in a more generalised form of Indocentric anthropology that emerged in the 1890s and focused particularly on the supposed debts of Maori religion to Hinduism.U članku autor sugerira da »orijentalna renesansa« koju je utemeljio Raymond Schwab nije ograničena na kontinentalnu Europu i Veliku Britaniju, nego je zapravo bila ključna, često zanemarivana nit u intelektualnom životu australoazijskih kolonija. Britanske imperijalne mreže, zajedno s cirkulacijom stručne periodike i monografija, osigurale su da je Britansko Carstvo temeljito oblikovalo intelektualnu kulturu Novog Zelanda u 19. stoljeću i da je ona bila istaknuta u debatama o podrijetlu i identitetu Maora. Pitanje maorskog podrijetla prevladavalo je u proučavanju Maora od otkrića Pacifika Jamesa Cooka i Josepha Banksa u kasnim šezdesetim godinama 18. stoljeća sve do tridesetih godina 20. stoljeća. Od početka je lingvistička komparacija pružala najvažniji dokaz za ustanovljavanje odnosa između naroda Pacifika i njihova krajnjeg podrijetla. Cook i Banks su skupljali riječi koje su ukazivale na duboko ukorijenjeno jedinstvo koje je povezivalo ljude istočnog i središnjeg Pacifika (kasnije poznate kao »polinezijski« jezici/narodi). Važnost lingvistike u istraživanjima Pacifika kasnije je pojačana utjecajem glasovitog diskursa Sir Williama Jonesa iz 1786., »O Hindusima«, koji je ustanovio sličnosti između grčkog jezika, latinskoga i sanskrta i tvrdio da je gramatička a ne etimološka usporedba osnova rekonstrukcije lingvističkih srodnosti. Ti su argumenti oblikovali buduću putanju polinezijskih studija. Mnogi pridošli (naseljeni), učenjaci kao i oni iz matične zemlje pokušavali su utvrditi da Maori pripadaju indoeuropskoj porodici i da se njihovo podrijetlo može pratiti unatrag sve do sjeverne Indije. Ti su argumenti bili uvijek sporni, posebice u zastrašujućoj atmosferi kolonijalnog života gdje je natjecanje za zemlju i vlast dalo rasnom identitetu povećano značenje. Mnogi su uzimali s rezervom pojam »arijevski Maor« i ukazivali da je maorska kultura preprimitivna da bi bila »arijevska« te da pokazuje veće sličnosti s dravidskom kulturom južne Indije. Konačno su ta sukobljena mišljenja sintetizirana u općenitijem obliku indocentrične antropologije koja se pojavila u devedesetim godinama 19. stoljeća i usredotočila poglavito na ono što maorska religija duguje hinduizmu. U ovom prilogu autor istražuje intelektualne i ideološke tokove koji su oblikovali debate o maorskom podrijetlu i kulturi. Na kraju sugerira da bi žustrije bavljenje australonezijskim studijama moglo obogatiti maorsku antropologiju i etničku povijest.L\u27auteur suggère que la «renaissance orientale» initiée par Raymond Schwab ne s\u27est pas limitée à l\u27Europe continentale et à la Grande Bretagne, mais constitue en fait une voie cruciale, souvent méconnue, de la vie intellectuelle des colonies australiennes et asiatiques. Les réseaux de la Grande Bretagne impériale ainsi que la circulation de publications périodiques spécialisées et de monographies, ont permis à l\u27Empire britannique de modeler fondamentalement la culture intellectuelle de la Nouvelle Zélande au 19ème siècle, qui s\u27est particulièrement distinguée dans les débats sur l\u27origine et l\u27identité des Maoris. La question de l\u27origine des Maoris a dominé l\u27étude de ce peuple depuis la découverte du Pacifique par James Cook et Joseph Banks à la fin des années 1760 jusqu\u27aux années 30. Dès le début, la comparaison linguistique fournit l\u27argument principal pour remonter jusqu\u27aux toutes premières origines des peuples du Pacifique, dans le sillage de Cook et Banks, qui réunissaient des vocabulaires montrant une profonde unité entre les habitants du Pacifique oriental et du Pacifique central (plus tard désignés sous le nom de peuples/langues «polynésiens»). L\u27importance de la linguistique dans les recherches sur le Pacifique s\u27est encore accrue par la suite à la faveur du discours de Sir William Jones (1786), «Des Hindous», qui établissait une similarité entre le grec, le latine et le sanskrit, et affirmait que la comparaison grammaticale fournit, plus que la comparaison étymologique, la base de la reconstruction des parentés linguistiques. Ces arguments ont décidé de la voie qu\u27allaient suivre les études polynésiennes, à savoir que nombre de savants étrangers (venus s\u27installer dans ces régions) et locaux, essayèrent de montrer que les Maoris appartenaient à la famille indo-européenne et qu\u27on pouvait suivre le tracé de leurs origines jusqu\u27au nord de l\u27Inde. Ces arguments ont toujours été sujets à caution, en particulier dans l\u27atmosphère effrayante de la vie coloniale où la course aux terres et au pouvoir décuplait l\u27importance de l\u27identité raciale. Nombreux sont ceux qui ont exprimé des réserves quant à la notion de «Maori aryen», et montré que la culture maorie était trop primitive pour être «aryenne», mais présentait de plus grandes similarités avec la culture dravidienne du sud de l\u27Inde. Finalement ces pensées antagonistes se sont synthétisées dans la nettement plus générale anthropologie indocentrique, apparue dans les années 1890 et qui se concentra essentiellement sur ce que la religion maori devait à l\u27hindouisme. L\u27auteur scrute les courants intellectuels et idéologiques qui ont modelé ces débats sur l\u27origine et la culture des Maoris. Pour finir, il suggère qu\u27un regain d\u27intérêt pour les études australonésiennes pourrait enrichir l\u27anthropologie et l\u27histoire ethnique des Maoris

Reading the Newspaper in Colonial Otago

Reading the Newspaper in Colonial Otag

Strategic Intimacies: Knowledge and Colonization in Southern New Zealand

This essay brings together two problematics that have occupied a central position in recent scholarship on modern British empire-building: colonial knowledge and the history of intimacy. Thinking about the inter-relationship between close encounters of empire and the production of colonial knowledge is not really a leap of the imagination

Culture and Colonization: Revisiting the Place of Writing in Colonial New Zealand

This essay attempts to untangle a central conceptual and analytical knot in recent New Zealand historical writing: the interrelationship between culture and colonization. It explores the ways in which approaches to New Zealand's colonial past have been transformed over the past 25 years and attempts to historicize these shifts by framing them against international intellectual developments and the cultural and political currents that reconfigured visions of the past in these islands. The essay then offers an assessment of a key preoccupation of recent scholarship: the relationships between writing and colonization. This discussion identifies some limitations of the existing work as well as underscoring where it does have real analytical purchase, before closing by pointing to some possible paths for future work. These new lines of inquiry, I argue, not only require us to ask some new questions about the cultural work writing did in a colonial context, but also necessitate a reassessment of how colonization actually worked on the ground

The challenges of genome-wide interaction studies: Lessons to learn from the analysis of HDL blood levels

Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have revealed 74 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) associated with high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL) blood levels. This study is, to our knowledge, the first genome-wide interaction study (GWIS) to identify SNP6SNP interactions associated with HDL levels. We performed a GWIS in the Rotterdam Study (RS) cohort I (RS-I) using the GLIDE tool which leverages the massively parallel computing power of Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) to perform linear regression on all genome-wide pairs of SNPs. By performing a meta-analysis together with Rotterdam Study cohorts II and III (RS-II and RS-III), we were able to filter 181 interaction terms with a p-value, 1 · 1028 that replicated in the two independent cohorts. We were not able to replicate any of these interaction term in the AGES, ARIC, CHS, ERF, FHS and NFBC-66 cohorts (Ntotal = 30, 011) when adjusting for multiple testing. Our GWIS resulted in the consistent finding of a possible interaction between rs774801 in ARMC8 (ENSG00000114098) and rs12442098 in SPATA8 (ENSG00000185594) being associated with HDL levels. However, p-values do not reach the preset Bonferroni correction of the p-values. Our study suggest that even for highly genetically determined traits such as HDL the sample sizes needed to detect SNP6SNP interactions are large and the 2-step filtering approaches do not yield a solution. Here we present our analysis plan and our reservations concerning GWIS

Bridging health technology assessment (HTA) with multicriteria decision analyses (MCDA): field testing of the EVIDEM framework for coverage decisions by a public payer in Canada

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Consistent healthcare decisionmaking requires systematic consideration of decision criteria and evidence available to inform them. This can be tackled by combining multicriteria decision analysis (MCDA) and Health Technology Assessment (HTA). The objective of this study was to field-test a decision support framework (EVIDEM), explore its utility to a drug advisory committee and test its reliability over time.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Tramadol for chronic non-cancer pain was selected by the health plan as a case study relevant to their context. Based on extensive literature review, a by-criterion HTA report was developed to provide synthesized evidence for each criterion of the framework (14 criteria for the MCDA Core Model and 6 qualitative criteria for the Contextual Tool). During workshop sessions, committee members tested the framework in three steps by assigning: 1) weights to each criterion of the MCDA Core Model representing individual perspective; 2) scores for tramadol for each criterion of the MCDA Core Model using synthesized data; and 3) qualitative impacts of criteria of the Contextual Tool on the appraisal. Utility and reliability of the approach were explored through discussion, survey and test-retest. Agreement between test and retest data was analyzed by calculating intra-rater correlation coefficients (ICCs) for weights, scores and MCDA value estimates.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The framework was found useful by the drug advisory committee in supporting systematic consideration of a broad range of criteria to promote a consistent approach to appraising healthcare interventions. Directly integrated in the framework as a "by-criterion" HTA report, synthesized evidence for each criterion facilitated its consideration, although this was sometimes limited by lack of relevant data. Test-retest analysis showed fair to good consistency of weights, scores and MCDA value estimates at the individual level (ICC ranging from 0.676 to 0.698), thus lending some support for the reliability of the approach. Overall, committee members endorsed the inclusion of most framework criteria and revealed important areas of discussion, clarification and adaptation of the framework to the needs of the committee.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>By promoting systematic consideration of all decision criteria and the underlying evidence, the framework allows a consistent approach to appraising healthcare interventions. Further testing and validation are needed to advance MCDA approaches in healthcare decisionmaking.</p

The Challenges of Genome-Wide Interaction Studies : Lessons to Learn from the Analysis of HDL Blood Levels

Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have revealed 74 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) associated with high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL) blood levels. This study is, to our knowledge, the first genome-wide interaction study (GWIS) to identify SNP×SNP interactions associated with HDL levels. We performed a GWIS in the Rotterdam Study (RS) cohort I (RS-I) using the GLIDE tool which leverages the massively parallel computing power of Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) to perform linear regression on all genome-wide pairs of SNPs. By performing a meta-analysis together with Rotterdam Study cohorts II and III (RS-II and RS-III), we were able to filter 181 interaction terms with a p-value<1 · 10-8 that replicated in the two independent cohorts. We were not able to replicate any of these interaction term in the AGES, ARIC, CHS, ERF, FHS and NFBC-66 cohorts (Ntotal = 30,011) when adjusting for multiple testing. Our GWIS resulted in the consistent finding of a possible interaction between rs774801 in ARMC8 (ENSG00000114098) and rs12442098 in SPATA8 (ENSG00000185594) being associated with HDL levels. However, p-values do not reach the preset Bonferroni correction of the p-values. Our study suggest that even for highly genetically determined traits such as HDL the sample sizes needed to detect SNP×SNP interactions are large and the 2-step filtering approaches do not yield a solution. Here we present our analysis plan and our reservations concerning GWIS.Peer reviewe

New genetic loci link adipose and insulin biology to body fat distribution.

Body fat distribution is a heritable trait and a well-established predictor of adverse metabolic outcomes, independent of overall adiposity. To increase our understanding of the genetic basis of body fat distribution and its molecular links to cardiometabolic traits, here we conduct genome-wide association meta-analyses of traits related to waist and hip circumferences in up to 224,459 individuals. We identify 49 loci (33 new) associated with waist-to-hip ratio adjusted for body mass index (BMI), and an additional 19 loci newly associated with related waist and hip circumference measures (P < 5 × 10(-8)). In total, 20 of the 49 waist-to-hip ratio adjusted for BMI loci show significant sexual dimorphism, 19 of which display a stronger effect in women. The identified loci were enriched for genes expressed in adipose tissue and for putative regulatory elements in adipocytes. Pathway analyses implicated adipogenesis, angiogenesis, transcriptional regulation and insulin resistance as processes affecting fat distribution, providing insight into potential pathophysiological mechanisms

Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research.Peer reviewe