Māori women educators’ pedagogy and Kaupapa Māori methodology

This thesis wove three Māori women educators’ pedagogy into the Whatu metaphor, from the findings, continuance and sustenance, every place a learning place and knowing each other. Kaupapa Māori philosophies informed the research methodology, which in turn became an instrument of analysis and subject of my research experience.

Development of microfluidic-based analytical methodology for studying the effects of chemotherapy agents on cancer tissue

Whilst a multitude of techniques have been employed to study the biology of tumour tissue and its response to chemotherapeutic reagents, most current methodologies do not capture the sophistication of the in vivo environment. Microfluidics however offers the ability to maintain and interrogate primary tissue samples in an environment with biomimetic flow characteristics. In this study head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) tumour biopsies have been used to investigate the performance of a microfluidic device for generating clinically-useful information. The response of fresh and cryogenically-frozen primary HNSCC or metastatic lymph node samples to chemotherapy drugs (cisplatin, 5-flurouracil or docetaxel), alone and in combination, were monitored for both proliferation (water-soluble tetrazolium salt metabolism) and cell death biomarker release (lactate dehydrogenase, LDH) “off-chip”. The frozen tissue showed no significant difference in terms of either proliferation or LDH release in comparison with the matched fresh samples. Administration of all drugs caused cell death, in a dose-response manner, with the combination showing the greatest amount of cytotoxicity particularly at days 8 and 9; correlating well with published clinical data. The system described here offers an innovative method for studying the tumour microenvironment in vitro and, through incorporation of relevant analytical modules, provides the basis of a pre-clinical device that can be used to define personalised treatment regimens.

A control methodology for DFIG type wind turbines connected to distribution networks

This paper proposes a decentralised controller design for doubly-fed induction generators (DFIGs) to enhance dynamic performance of distribution networks. The change in the output power due to the variable nature of wind is considered as an uncertain term in the design algorithm. In addition, the interconnection effect of the other subsystems are considered in the design process. The H norm of the uncertain system is found out and simultaneous output-feedback linear controllers are designed based controller is verified on a 16 bus distribution test system for severe disturbances. Simulation results indicate that the designed controller is robust against uncertainties in operating conditions

Ubiquitous multicore (UM) methodology for multimedia

For more than a decade now, multimedia developers have usually "ride the waves", so to speak, with the coming of each generation of microprocessors, which allows their applications, designs and programs to usually running more proficiently, efficiently and effectively. This so-called "free" ride seems to be coming to an end, with results of increases clock speeds, the widening of the gap in processor and memory performance, and the tradeoffs that are needed to meet the former two points, with the new multi-core systems. In this paper, we build upon our previous work within multi-core systems, by proposing a ubiquitous multi-core (UM) design. The goal of such a framework is help researchers to plan and implement their multimedia applications so they can take advantage of speed up computations of multi-core systems and allow real-time multimedia. As our experiments show, our UM system increases performance speeds at an average of 100%, with the average execution cost of 1.4ms, showing that multimedia can use multi-core resources efficiently and effectively.

A Q methodology study of stakeholders' views about accountability for promoting healthy food environments in England through the responsibility deal food network

In March 2011, the United Kingdom's (UK's) Government launched five Public Health Responsibility Deal Networks to address public health priorities. The Networks used voluntary partnerships to influence peoples' choice architecture to move them toward healthier behaviors. The purpose of this research was to conduct an exploratory study of diverse stakeholders' perspectives about perceived responsibility and accountability expectations to improve food environments in England through the Food Network partnerships. A purposive sample of policy elites (n=31) from government, academia, food industry and non-government organizations sorted 48 statements related to improving food environments in England. Statements were grounded in three theoretical perspectives (i.e., legitimacy, nudge and public health law). PQMethod 2.33 statistical software program used factor analysis to identify viewpoints based on intra-individual differences for how participants sorted statements. The results revealed three distinct viewpoints, which explained 64% of the variance for 31 participants, and emphasized different expectations about responsibility. The food environment protectors (n=17) underscored government responsibility to address unhealthy food environments if voluntary partnerships are ineffective; the partnership pioneers (n=12) recognized government-industry partnerships as legitimate and necessary to address unhealthy food environments; and the commercial market defenders (n=1) emphasized individual responsibility for food choices and rejected government intervention to improve food environments. Consensus issues included: protecting children's right to health; food industry practices that can and should be changed; government working with industry on product reformulation; and building consumer support for economically viable healthy products. Contentious issues were: inadequacy of accountability structures and government inaction to regulate food marketing practices targeting children. We conclude that understanding different viewpoints is a step toward building mutual trust to strengthen accountability structures that may help stakeholders navigate ideologically contentious issues to promote healthy food environments in England.

A new application of an evolving tree to failure mode and effect analysis methodology

Failure Mode and Effect Analysis (FMEA) is a popular safety and reliability analysis methodology for examining potential failure modes of products, process, designs, or services, in a wide range of industries. Despite its popularity, there are a number of limitations of FMEA, and two highlighted issues are the bulky FMEA form and its intricacy of use. To overcome these shortcomings, we introduce the idea of visualisation pertaining to the failure modes or control actions in FMEA. A visualisation model with an incremental learning feature, i.e., the evolving tree (ETree), is adopted to allow the failure modes or control actions in FMEA to be clustered and visualized. The failure modes or control actions are grouped and visualized with consideration of their Severity, Occurrence, and Detection scores. Our proposed approach allows the failure modes or control actions to be mapped into a tree structure for visualisation. The devised approach is evaluated with a benchmark problem. The experiments show that the control actions of FMEA can be visualised through the tree structure, which provides a quick and easily understandable platform of the FMEA spreadsheet to facilitate decision making tasks.

A proposed definition of the engineering methodology

BACKGROUND An adequately concise and accurate definition of the profession of engineering that can simultaneously encompass a majority of the profession and be reasonably understood by a majority of society arguably remains as an elusive goal yet to be attained.While numerous definitions of the profession exist they tend to describe specific methods or approaches deployed in the practice of engineering rather than be suitably descriptive of the profession of engineering.The lack of an adequate, accurate and relevant definition of the profession of engineering has, and continues to, present disadvantages to the profession. While acknowledging this problem the profession continues to rely on existing inadequate, inaccurate, or irrelevant definitions of itself as it struggles to attain the degree of awareness, recognition, and appreciation of its significant benefits that directly impact society and the individual.Accordingly in many countries the choice of engineering as a career path often ranks below other profession choices such as medicine, law, and management - especially with adolescent girls. Also the relevance and role of professional engineering in socio-economic and socio-political contexts is often undervalued or neglected – especially in national and international policy discussions and development.PURPOSETo provide a clear, concise, and accurate definition of the profession of engineering that is acceptable for most, if not all, major stakeholders.METHOD A review of historical and contemporary definitions of professional engineering is provided. Using Koen’s definition of the engineering method in conjunction with Shulman’s set of characteristics common to professions a more generic definition is derived that seeks to simultaneously accommodate the homogenous multi-disciplinary attributes of professional engineering as well as accommodate the discipline specific attributes.RESULTS A proposed definition of the engineering methodology has been developed. A background introduction and justified derivation is provided for the proposed definition.CONCLUSIONS The limitations and inadequacies of historical and contemporary definitions of professional engineering have been considered. Using Koen’s definition as a basis a more generic multi-disciplinary and more contemporary definition is derived and presented. The goal of the proposed definition of the engineering methodology is to provide a more concise, more accurate, and most importantly a more comprehensible definition of the profession of engineering for the purpose of being applied to all major stakeholders of the profession.

A methodology for simulating hydrogen sulphide generation in sewer network using EPA SWMM

Predicting hydrogen sulphide concentration in sewer network through modelling tools will be beneficial for many stakeholders to design appropriate mitigation strategies. However, the hydrogen sulphide modelling in a sewer network is crucially dependent on the hydraulic modelling of the sewer. The establishment of precise hydrogen sulphide and hydraulic modelling however requires detailed and accurate information about the sewer network structure and the model parameters. This paper outlines a novel approach for the development of hydraulic and hydrogen sulphide modelling to predict the concentration of hydrogen sulphide in sewer network. The approach combines the calculation of wastewater generation and implementation of flow routing on the EPA SWMM 5.0 platform to allow hydrodynamic simulations. Dynamic wave routing is used for hydraulic simulations. It is considered to be the best approach to route existing/old sewer flow. The build-up of hydrogen sulphide model includes the empirical models of hydrogen sulphide generation and emission. Trial of the model was conducted to simulate a sewer network in Seoul, South Korea with some hypothetical data. Further analysis on the use of chemical dosing on the sewer pipe was also performed by the model. Promising results have been obtained through the model, however calibration and validation of the model is required. The presented methodology provides a possibility of the free platform SWMM to be used as a prediction tool of hydrogen sulphide generation. © 2014 © 2014 Balaban Desalination Publications. All rights reserved.

Multi-phase microstructure design of a novel high strength TRIP steel through experimental methodology

The multi-phase structure of a novel low-alloy transformation induced plasticity (TRIP) steel was designed through experimental analysis. The evolutions of both microstructure and mechanical properties during the two-stage heat treatment were analyzed. The phase transformations during the intercritical annealing and the isothermal bainitic transformation were investigated by means of dilatometry. It was shown that two types of C diffusion were detected during intercritical annealing and a complex microstructure was formed after heat treatment. The processing parameters were selected in such a way to obtain microstructures with systematically different volume fractions of ferrite, bainite and retained austenite. The volume fractions of ferrite and retained austenite were found to be two main factors controlling the ductility. Furthermore, a high volume fraction of C-rich retained austenite, which was stabilized at room temperature, was the origin of a TRIP effect. The resulting material demonstrates a significant improvement in the ultimate tensile strength (1077. MPa) with good uniform elongation (22.5%), as compared to conventional TRIP steels. © 2014 Elsevier B.V.

Analysis of the inverse kinematics problem for 3-DOF axis-symmetric parallel manipulators with parasitic motion

 Determining an analytical solution to the inverse kinematics problem for a parallel manipulator is typically a straightforward problem. However, lower mobility parallel manipulators with 2-5 degrees of freedom (DOFs) often suffer from an unwanted parasitic motion in one or more DOFs. For such manipulators, the inverse kinematics problem can be significantly more difficult. This paper contains an analysis of the inverse kinematics problem for a class of 3-DOF parallel manipulators with axis-symmetric arm systems. All manipulators in the studied class exhibit parasitic motion in one DOF. For manipulators in the studied class, the general solution to the inverse kinematics problem is reduced to solving a univariate equation, while analytical solutions are presented for several important special cases.