Energy saving potential in the New Zealand agricultural sector with emphasis on the vegetable greenhouse industry : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Applied Science in Natural Resource Management at Massey University

In the last decade, the energy demand of New Zealand's horticultural and agricultural sub sectors has increased as a result of land use conversion, intensity of production, the use of irrigation and an increase in energy intensive horticulture, such as greenhouse vegetable production. This has highlighted the sector's reliance on fossil fuels leaving it susceptible to future shortages, higher prices and the forthcoming carbon charge. As part of a contract with the Energy Efficiency Conservation Authority, which aimed to compile, estimate and analyse information from a wide variety of sources on energy end uses and patterns of energy consumption within the agricultural sub-sectors, available literature on energy demand by fuel type and the various uses to which energy is put in the New Zealand primary production sub-sectors was collated in matrices. Through the compilation of these matrices it was evident that limited energy related research was available relating to the greenhouse sub sector. The New Zealand greenhouse industry is a relatively energy intensive sub-sector of the primary production industry and relies heavily on the use of fossil fuels. The impending carbon charge may result in a cost which growers may be unable to pass on due to competition on the domestic and export markets from non-Kyoto countries. It follows that reducing energy consumption and consequently avoiding the emissions charge would be a means of increased viability for the industry. This part of the research was funded and conducted in conjunction with the New Zealand Vegetable and Potato Grower's Federation Inc. A walk-through energy audit was designed and conducted with 22 greenhouse vegetable growers. This provided an in-depth case study perspective in terms of what technologies and practices are currently used by the New Zealand's protected cropping industry. The findings from the energy audit show that location and the heating system type are significant factors in determining energy use. The main areas identified where potential energy saving could be made were minimising heat loss, through the cladding, the heat distribution system and the flue, and improving heating efficiency, through improved heater maintenance. An energy saving model was designed using Microsoft Excel for the purpose of encouraging the user to think about potential energy savings that could be made within their individual greenhouse operation, and also the potential cost of the carbon charge on to their business. Recommendations from the model were based on best practice and use of energy saving technologies identified through the energy audits, review of current literature and consultation with manufacturers

Reconsidering online reputation systems

Social and socioeconomic interactions and transactions often require trust. In digital spaces, the main approach to facilitating trust has effectively been to try to reduce or even remove the need for it through the implementation of reputation systems. These generate metrics based on digital data such as ratings and reviews submitted by users, interaction histories, and so on, that are intended to label individuals as more or less reliable or trustworthy in a particular interaction context. We suggest that conventional approaches to the design of such systems are rooted in a capitalist, competitive paradigm, relying on methodological individualism, and that the reputation technologies themselves thus embody and enact this paradigm in whatever space they operate in. We question whether the politics, ethics and philosophy that contribute to this paradigm align with those of some of the contexts in which reputation systems are now being used, and suggest that alternative approaches to the establishment of trust and reputation in digital spaces need to be considered for alternative contexts

Creating personas for political and social consciousness in HCI design

Personas have become an important tool for Human-Computer Interaction professionals. However, they are not immune to limitations and critique, including stereotyping. We suggest that while some of the criticisms to personas are important, the use of personas is open to them in part because of an unquestioned focus on explicating user needs and goals in traditional persona research and creation. This focus, while helping designers, obscures some other potentially relevant aspects. In particular, when the goal of the product or software being designed is associated with social and political goals rather than with bringing a product to the market, it may be relevant to focus personas on political aspirations, social values and the will or capacity of personas to take action. We argue that it is possible when producing personas (and associated scenarios) to partially move away from representing needs and embrace personas which more explicitly represent political or social beliefs and values. We also suggest that a phenomenographic approach to user data analysis is one way to achieve this. We provide empirical evidence for our position from two large-scale European projects, the first one in the area of Social Innovation and the second in the area of eParticipation

OERopoly: A game to generate collective intelligence around OER

Collective Intelligence (CI ) is a phenomenon that emerges at the crossroads of three worlds: Open Educational Resources (OER), Web 2.0 technologies and Online Learning Communities. Building CI for the OER movement means capturing the richness of information, experiences, knowledge and resources, that the movement is constantly generating, in a way that they can be shared and reused for the benefit of the movement itself. The organisation of CI starts from collecting the knowledge and experiences of OER's practitioners and scholars in new creative forms, and then situating this knowledge in a collective 'pot' from where it can be leveraged with new 'intelligent' meanings and toward new 'intelligent' goals. This workshop is an attempt to do so by engaging participants in a CI experience, in which they will contribute to, and at the same time take something from, the existing CI around OER, Web 2.0 technologies and Online Learning Communities

Employers and the governance of inclusion: Disadvantaged youths’ access to dual apprenticeships in collective skill formation systems

In Anna Wilson’s doctoral dissertation, the aim is to understand the extent to which vocational training systems seek to be inclusive towards disadvantaged youth and the factors and conditions that contribute to a willingness of employers to provide apprenticeships to this group. The main can be summarized in two main themes. The state as an inclusion-driver and an inclusive employer. Efforts to include disadvantaged young people in in-firm vocational training are largely contingent upon the public sector and the state. One of the dissertation’s three papers shows the engagement and involvement of firms in such endeavors are less extensive than the state-driven, ‘external’, measures. In an experimental employer survey, Wilson finds that employers active in the public sector are more lenient towards disadvantaged youth as apprentice candidates than those in the private sector. In this study, against the expectations, neither training network nor employer association affiliation – factors that have been shown to have a positive effect on willingness to fulfil a social policy role before – correlates with a more lenient hiring attitudes towards disadvantaged apprentice candidates. Wilson shows in a study of short vocational programs in Switzerland it was possible for the state to broker an agreement with the employers’ camp which aimed to create training opportunities for disadvantaged, practically oriented youths. This despite the tradition of a little involved state, which is widely believed to be a cornerstone in the strength and robustness of the VET system in general. The importance of personal beliefs and goodwill. Although state efforts seem to be a significant force behind the provision of and access to training for low achievers and other disadvantaged groups, there are also private employers that do indeed show a higher willingness to select disadvantaged youth for apprenticeships (short or regular). Her findings show, in different ways, that the attitude of the recruiter, regardless of sector, has a determining impact on the willingness to offer training for disadvantaged and on preferences for specific candidates. In the employer survey, when zooming in on the more egalitarian individuals who are active in the private sector in the commercial business sphere in the canton of Vaud, there is a tendency to attribute less importance to aptitude test scores as well as the educational track. This shows that the sector type, indeed, does not explain all the variation in egalitarian stated behavior, but that individual recruiters who are willing to lower the bars for low achievers exist in the private sector as well. To summarize, employers’ inclusive hiring behavior is more likely to play out in ‘favorable employer’ settings: where profit-making is less of a concern, where in-firm resources are available for vocational training, in the instances where the training is not too theoretically demanding, and where there is a personal belief in ‘giving a chance’ also to low achieving amongst employers

Learning to see with Deleuze: understanding affective responses in image-viewer research assemblages

I describe an approach to analysing the affective flows produced in sociomaterial assemblages of visual images and humans in research processes. The approach combines Deleuzian understandings of assemblage, repetition and difference, and of lines of articulation and flight, with interpretative techniques drawn from visual social semiotics. I use examples from my research into images shared by professionals on Twitter to illustrate how this approach can reveal not only the forces, intensities and hidden logics that lead to particular responses, but also the ways in which these responses impact on research decisions and interpretations

Investigating Consistency of Landscape-Scale Green Infrastructure in Local Government Policy

Planning for Climate Change is multifaceted and requires effort across all scales. Green Infrastructure networks of green spaces, natural lands, reserves, working lands, core habitat, riparian corridors, parks, open spaces, private conservations lands, and other complementary land uses work together to support life on earth and human existence through the ecosystem services provided. Clean air, clean water, carbon sequestration, food production, recreation, pollination, and spiritual and cultural benefits are only a few of the services that natural lands provide society. With climate change occurring due to human actions such as land use, development, and energy use, to name a few, society must adopt adaptive measures and implement adaptive mechanisms in order to bolster and increase local community resilience. The benefits of Green Infrastructure provide communities with greater resilience to disturbances and climate risks. This research looks at the consistency of GI-focused plans at the landscape scale and assesses the manifestation of consistency with local-level policy administered in comprehensive plans. The results of this study can give local governments a better understanding of where policy and implementation improvement can occur to create more robust communities facing climate changes, disturbances, and extremes that will occur in this century. Two different landscape-scale Green Infrastructure plans from different geographies, with different guiding landscape ecology principles, were used to closely investigate these concepts and better understand how local governments understand or acknowledge Green Infrastructure as a form of resilience to climate change

Paths, politics and patterns of convergence - A comparative case study of youth unemployment policy change in Sweden, the United Kingdom and France

The ‘activation’ of labour market policies is a relatively undisputed phenomenon in the concomitant research field. However, welfare regime scholars predict the importance of path dependence in different advanced welfare states’ policy responses to the ever-present problem of mass youth unemployment. The aim of this thesis is to explore the trajectories of youth unemployment policy in Sweden, the UK and France between 1990-2014 in order to determine whether there has been a convergence of policy across different welfare regime types. Using process tracing and motivation analysis methods, the parliamentary debates surrounding four major youth employment programmes are analysed through the juxtapose perspectives of youth transition regime theory and policy convergence theory. The indicators of policy change detected through these case studies are classified under ideational, organizational and financial dimensions developed by Weishaupt (2011). The results of the comparative analysis of the three countries suggest that the youth transition regime legacy in the overarching goals and purposes of policy choices is a strong determinant for policy choice; that patterns of convergence are strongest with regards to subsidization of non-public employers and the expenditures on active labour market measures

Parental choice of primary school in England: what ‘type’ of school do parents choose?

We investigate the central premise of the theory of markets in education, namely that parents value academic standards. We ask what parents really want from schools and whether different types of parents have similar preferences. We examine parents’ stated preferences and revealed preferences for schools (their actual choice of school as opposed to what they say they value in a school). More educated and higher socio-economic status (SES) parents are more likely to cite academic standards, whilst less educated and lower SES parents are more likely to cite proximity. More advantaged parents choose better performing schools, particularly in areas with many schools and therefore a lot of potential school choice. More advantaged parents also choose schools with much lower proportions of pupils eligible for free school meals, relative to other schools available to them. Hence whilst parents do not admit to choosing schools on the basis of their social composition, this happens in practice. Most parents get their first choice of school (94%) and this holds both for more and less advantaged parents, though this is partially because poorer parents make more ‘realistic’, i.e. less ambitious, choices. If, in areas where there is a lot of potential competition between schools, more advantaged families have a higher chance of achieving their more ambitious choices that do poorer parents, this could tend to exacerbate social segregation in our schools.school preferences, school choice, parental choice

What parents want: school preferences and school choice

Parental demand for academic performance is a key element in the view that strengthening school choice will drive up school performance. In this paper we analyse what parents look for in choosing schools. We assemble a unique dataset combining survey information on parents' choices plus a rich set of socio-economic characteristics; administrative data on school characteristics, admissions criteria and allocation rules; and spatial data attached to a pupil census to define the de facto set of schools available to each family in the survey. To achieve identification, we focus on cities where the school place allocation system is truth-revealing ("equal preferences"). We take great care in trying to capture the set of schools that each family could realistically choose from. We also look at a large subset of parents who continued living in the same house as before the child was born, to avoid endogenous house/school moves. We then model the choices made in terms of the characteristics of schools and families and the distances involved. School characteristics include measures of academic performance, school socio-economic and ethnic composition, and its faith school status. Initial results showed strong differences in the set of choices available to parents in different socio-economic positions. Our central analysis uses multinomial logistic regression to show that families do indeed value academic performance in schools. They also value school composition -- preferring schools with low fractions of children from poor families. We compute trade-offs between these characteristics as well as between these and distance travelled. We are able to compare these trade-offs for different families. Our results suggest that preferences do not vary greatly between different socio-economic groups once constraints are fully accounted for.school preferences, school choice, parental choice