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Victim-survivors of Intimate Partner Violence Forced to Participate in Crimes: Some Thoughts on the Potential Application of Discrimination Law
(2024-03-04) Norton, JC; Tolmie, Julie
This article examines the legal position of victim-survivors who offend under coercion from intimate partner violence. It considers whether the unavailability of the defences of compulsion and necessity as a result of the courts' interpretation of those defences in New Zealand constitutes discrimination on the grounds of sex. This article adds to the broader literature raising questions about the capacity of discrimination law (as it is currently conceived) to address sex inequality, particularly as it intersects with other forms of inequality based on class and race.
Victim-Survivors of Intimate Partner Violence Who are Forced to Participate in Crimes: Are They Treated Fairly in the Criminal Law?
(2024-03-04) Tolmie, Julia; Norton, Jane; Wilson, Denise; Smith, Rachel
Research suggests that a portion of female offenders in New Zealand offend in response to intimate partner violence victimisation. It is therefore critical to consider whether coercion because of intimate partner violence is adequately accommodated in the criminal justice response to such offending. In this article we examine the law on party liability and the defences of compulsion and duress of circumstances. We suggest that these defences are not capable of adequately recognising the coercive circumstances that can result in women offending or being held accountable for their male partner's offending by means of the expansive doctrine of party liability. The current law therefore requires urgent reform.
Balancing Rights and Civic Freedoms with Effective Pandemic Governance: The Aotearoa New Zealand Experience
(2024-08-19) Norton, Jane; Knight, Dean R
This report explores the response to the Covid-19 pandemic in Aotearoa New Zealand, with a focus on its balancing of rights and general protection of civic freedoms, in relation to the wide range of public health measures that were deployed, from significant lockdowns to border quarantine and vaccination requirements. These public health measures, including some with significant impact on people’s lives and freedoms, were implemented through executive-made orders, mandated briefly by long-standing infectious disease powers and a bespoke Covid-19 Act with broad executive power. However, central to the legal framework and government’s response was the expectation that all public health measures would be consistent with the Bill of Rights Act; in other words, any limits imposed on people’s rights and freedoms needed to be prescribed by law and demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society. A complex system of accountability processes sought to protect fundamental rights. The appraisal of measures for rights consistency focused especially on generous framing of implicated rights, careful definition of public health objectives and assessment of whether the means employed to achieve those objectives limited rights no more than reasonably necessary. Accountability processes insisted the government explain its response and justify limits imposed on people’s rights and freedoms; judicial scrutiny continued, allowing the courts to call out and invalidate measures they considered unjustifiably breached rights and freedoms. Democratic processes and civic activity continued too, despite the public health measures, sometimes modified to take account of heightened precautions. Overall, Aotearoa New Zealand was able to deliver an effective public health response, with comparative successful outcomes, while generally maintaining and respecting human rights and civic freedoms.
“Everything you do is giving them feedback”: A phenomenographic study of teacher conceptions of feedback
(NZCER Press, New Zealand Council for Educational Research, 2024-06-01) Harris, Lois R; Brown, Gavin TL
Teachers often provide or set up opportunities for feedback within classroom contexts. How they understand what feedback is and how it should be given is essential to their feedback practices. Since feedback is commonly a communicative exchange between teacher and students or students and their peers, it is essential to understand teacher conceptions about feedback. This study explored 18 teachers’ conceptions of feedback and how they were enacted. Phenomenographic analysis identified five hierarchically ordered feedback conceptions associated with three major purposes, that is: i) satisfying stakeholder expectations, ii) maintaining student psycho-social wellbeing, and iii) supporting learning growth. Teachers experienced significant tensions among these three functions, highlighting the importance of ensuring that teacher concerns for student emotional wellbeing do not undermine feedback for academic improvement purposes. Likewise, the study points to the importance of aligning system policies and expectations around feedback with teacher beliefs.
The Supreme Court and the Law of Trusts and Charities
(LexisNexis, 2024-10-17) Norton, Jane; Littlewood, Michael; McLean, Janet
This chapter looks closely at two decisions arising from the past decade: Clayton v Clayton [Vaughan Road Property Trust] and Attorney-General v Family First New Zealand. On their face, these cases could not be more different. In the first, a wife wishes to access assets in a (private) discretionary trust after a relationship breakdown. The other involves a conservative organisation that advocates for the traditional family seeking (public) charitable trust status. Despite these differences — and how trust law has been traditionally conceptualised — these cases show how values may play a role in disputes involving trusts. In each case, the Court’s guidance was essential because the issues were not clearly resolved by legislation.
Human Rights Law (Looseleaf)
(Thomson Reuters, 2022-11-25) Qui, Lauren; Dalziel, Kathryn; Norton, Jane; Hancock, John
Human Rights Law brings together commentary and analysis on the principal human rights statutes in a domestic and international context. Human rights law in New Zealand has been evolving and developing since the Treaty of Waitangi was signed in 1840. While there is a close interrelationship between the key statutes, human rights law impacts on diverse areas of law which would otherwise be unrelated. Human Rights Law is the only product to combine a comprehensive selection of human rights materials, including domestic legislation, commentary and key international instruments. The team of Human Rights Law updating authors bring together human rights experts working in legal practice, university law schools and for the Human Rights Commission. This results in a balanced and comprehensive view of an important, constantly developing, area of law. Human Rights Law is a valuable resource for anyone who is required to provide advice on or to research human rights law in New Zealand. The format is designed to allow easy reference and quick access to the relevant information, and the human rights statutes included allow a wide variety of practical and academic queries to be addressed with confidence.
Experiences of parents whose children participated in a longitudinal follow‐up study
(Wiley, 2021-03-16) Franke, Nike; Rogers, Jennifer; Wouldes, Trecia; Ward, Kim; Brown, Gavin; Jonas, Monique; Keegan, Peter; Harding, Jane
Abstract Background: Long‐term follow‐up is necessary to understand the impact of perinatal interventions. Exploring parents' motives and experiences in consenting to their children taking part in longitudinal studies and understanding what outcomes are important to families may enhance participation and mitigate the loss to follow‐up. As existing evidence is largely based on investigators' perspectives using Western samples, the present pilot study explored parents' perspectives in a multicultural New Zealand context. Methods: Data were generated using semi‐structured interviews with parents whose children had participated in a longitudinal study after neonatal recruitment. Parents' experiences of being part of the study were analysed thematically using an inductive approach. Results: Parents (n = 16) were generally happy with the outcomes measured. Additionally, parents were interested in lifelong goals such as the impact of parental diabetes. We identified three themes: (1) Facilitators: Research participation was aided by motives and parent and research characteristics such as wishing to help others and straightforward recruitment; (2) Barriers: A hesitancy to participate was due to technical and clinical research aspects, participation burden and cultural barriers, such as complex wording, time commitment and nonindigenous research and (3) Benefits: Children and parents experienced advantages such as the opportunity for education. Conclusions: Parents reported positive experiences and described the unexpected benefit of increasing families' health knowledge through participation. Improvements for current follow‐up studies were identified. Different ethnicities reported different experiences and perspectives, which warrants ongoing research, particularly with indigenous research participants.
Vision: “AccessFormer”: Feedback-Driven Access Control Policy Generation Framework
(2024-02-26) Hamanheriya Lekamalage, Sakuna Harinda Jayasundara; Gamagedara Arachchilage, Nalin Asanka; Russello, Giovanni
Access control failures can cause data breaches, putting entire organizations at risk of financial loss and reputation damage. One of the main reasons for such failures is the mistakes made by system administrators when they manually generate low-level access control policies directly from high-level requirement specifications. Therefore, to help administrators in that policy generation process, previous research proposed graphical policy authoring tools and automated policy generation frameworks. However, in reality, those tools and frameworks are neither usable nor reliable enough to help administrators generate access control policies accurately while avoiding access control failures. Therefore, as a solution, in this paper, we present “AccessFormer”, a novel policy generation framework that improves both the usability and reliability of access control policy generation. Through the proposed framework, on the one hand, we improve the reliability of policy generation by utilizing Language Models (LMs) to generate, verify, and refine access control policies by incorporating the system’s as well as administrator’s feedback. On the other hand, we also improve the usability of the policy generation by proposing a usable policy authoring interface designed to help administrators understand policy generation mistakes and accurately provide feedback.
Does the inclusion of other modalities enhance the performance of speech emotion recognition systems?
(Australasian Speech Science and Technology Association, 2024-12-01) Liu, Junchen; James, Jesin; Nathwani, Karan
The pursuit of natural human-computer interaction has driven the advancement of emotion recognition technology. Speech emotion recognition (SER) has gained widespread attention due to its high applicability. Recently, some researchers have been interested in developing multi-modal emotion recognition (MER)systemsthat integrate speech with text and video modalities to enhance robustness and accuracy. We analyse the performance of these systems using the IEMOCAP and RAVDESS datasets, highlighting the impact of different modality combinations on emotion recognition accuracy. This paper aims to guide future research in optimising MER by leveraging the complementary advantages of various modalities.
Engaging with Brown Buttabean Motivation for Sustained Weight Loss
(Annals of Family Medicine, 2023-01) Goodyear-Smith, Felicity; Savila, Faasisil; Harwood, Matire; Bagg, Warwick; Leakehe, Paea; Letele, Dave; Swinburn, Boyd; Bamber, Anele
Context Brown Buttabean Motivation (BBM) is a grassroot Pacific-led organisation aiming to reduce obesity amongst Pasifika (Pacific people in Aotearoa New Zealand) and Indigenous Maori, helping them choose a healthy and active life-style for themselves, their children and their wider family. BBM offers a holistic approach to weight loss, recognising that mental health, family and cultural factors all play essential and critical roles in nutrition and physical activity patterns. Objective To understand how participants experience and engage with BBM. Study Design &; Analysis Qualitative study conducted by our co-design research team within a broader BBM research project. Initial inductive thematic approach followed by theoretical deductive analysis of coded data guided by Pacific Fonofale and Māori Te Whare Tapa Whā health models. In this meeting-house metaphor, the floor is family, roof is culture, house-posts are physical, mental, spiritual and socio-demographic health and well-being, surrounded by environment, time and context. Setting South Auckland, New Zealand 2021 Population Studied BBM participants Instrument Semi-structured interviews Outcome Measures Narrative data Results 22 interviewees (50% female) aged 24-60 years of mixed Pacific and Māori ethnicities. Majority self-reported weight loss (between three and 135kg) since starting BBM. Two researchers independently coded data with adjudication (kappa=0.61) Participants identified the interactive holistic nature of health and wellbeing from BBM. As well as physical, mental and spiritual benefits, BBM helped many re-connect with both their family and their culture. BBM is seen as a new way of life. Participants "immediately belong to BBM family" regardless of culture or size, "with no judgements" and adopt the BBM motto "no excuses". Conclusions Many weight loss studies provide programmes to improve physical exercise and nutrition, but seldom address sustainability and other core factors such as mental health and motivation. BBM is a community-embedded Maori and Pasifika-led intervention, with no reliance on researchers nor external authorities for its ongoing implementation. It addresses factors impacting participants' lives and social determinants of health, including vaccination drives, food parcels and adapting to the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdowns. Our three-year longitudinal cohort study assessing sustained weight loss is ongoing.
Local slope stability in Auckland’s North Shore East Coast Bays Formation rocks
(2024-12-20) Li, Kaiqi; Adam, Ludmila; Brook, Martin
Thoughts on Auckland North Shore East Coast Bays Formation rock slope stability and engineering design from field investigation and laboratory test results.
Playing the posts: post-Anthropocene, posthuman, post-apocalypse
(2024-12-20) May, Lawrence; Wilde, Poppy
Get remimazolam off the bench and into the game
(Wiley, 2024-12) Anderson, Brian J; Sneyd, J Robert
Associations between growth and childhood body composition in very preterm, late preterm and term children
(Wiley, 2024-12) Nyakotey, David A; Gamble, Greg D; McKinlay, Christopher JD; Bloomfield, Frank H; Harding, Jane E; Neonatal Nutritional Interventions Early School‐age Outcomes Studies (NIEOS) collaboration
Aim
To determine how gestational age at birth and postnatal growth relate to body composition in childhood.
Methods
We calculated conditional growth (birth-2 years, 2 years-6 years) and measured body composition at 2 and 6 years using bioelectrical impedance in cohorts of New Zealand children born very preterm (VPT; 23-31 weeks), late preterm (LPT; 35- <37 weeks) and term (≥37 weeks). We explored the relationships between growth and fat mass (FM) index and fat-free mass (FFM) index at 6 years using multivariable linear regression.
Results
Of 1125 children (51% male), 202 were VPT, 114 LPT and 809 Term. Compared to Term, VPT but not LPT were lighter and shorter at 2 and 6 years and had lower FM index and FFM index. The association between weight growth from 2 to 6 years and both FM index and FFM index at 6 years was stronger than for weight growth from birth to 2 years or height growth at any period in all gestational age groups.
Conclusions
Size and body composition at 2 and 6 years are different between infants born VPT, but not LPT, and at term. Later weight growth is more strongly associated with childhood body composition than earlier growth.
The role of student conceptions of feedback and marker comments on student performance
(2025) Aspden, Caroline; Harper, Amanda; Brown, Gavin
Decoding Chinese undergraduates’ conceptions of assessment: A repeated measures replication study of the C-SCoA inventory
(2024) Fang, Jingjing; Brown, Gavin
How students understand the nature and purpose of assessment can be evaluated with the Chinese Student Conceptions of Assessment (C-SCoA) inventory, developed for the Chinese context. To date, surveyed samples have not included undergraduate bachelor’s degree students, nor has test-retest reliability been demonstrated. The present study provides partial validation evidence of the C-SCoA for research purposes by surveying 448 undergraduate students (split into honours and ordinary groups) at an elite Chinese university. An eight-factor correlated model with 26 items was preferred compared to the previously reported hierarchical, eight-factor, 33-item model. Invariance testing after one semester found scalar equivalence, a promising development for the application of the C-SCoA as a research tool in Chinese higher education. Results corresponded to previous studies of Chinese students’ conceptions of assessment as being reliable, relevant, competitive, and social tools but with little impact from families.
Regulation of contact inhibition of locomotion by Eph-ephrin signalling
(Wiley, 2013-09) Batson, J; Astin, JW; Nobes, CD
Contact inhibition of locomotion (CIL) occurs when a cell stops migrating in a particular direction upon contact with another cell. Many cancer cells show Contact inhibition of locomotion when contacting one another but display contact-unimpeded migration following collision with noncancer cells. Here we review current understanding of Contact inhibition of locomotion, from Abercrombie's historical studies of cells in tissue culture to more recent analyses of Contact inhibition of locomotion in vivo. We discuss the cellular machinery required for CIL and the molecular signals that regulate it. We focus on our recent finding that in prostate cancer cells, Contact inhibition of locomotion is regulated by a balance between EphA and EphB receptor signalling. We show that, as recently described for chick heart fibroblasts, microtubule dynamics are required for Contact inhibition of locomotion in prostate cancer cells and we propose that stabilization of microtubules could account for defective Contact inhibition of locomotion between cancer cells and noncancer cells.
Molecular analysis of two cytochrome P450 monooxygenase genes required for paxilline biosynthesis in Penicillium paxilli, and effects of paxilline intermediates on mammalian maxi-K ion channels
(Springer Nature, 2003-10) McMillan, LK; Carr, RL; Young, CA; Astin, JW; Lowe, RGT; Parker, EJ; Jameson, GB; Finch, SC; Miles, CO; McManus, OB; Schmalhofer, WA; Garcia, ML; Kaczorowski, GJ; Goetz, M; Tkacz, JS; Scott, B
The gene cluster required for paxilline biosynthesis in Penicillium paxilli contains two cytochrome P450 monooxygenase genes, paxP and paxQ. The primary sequences of both proteins are very similar to those of proposed cytochrome P450 monooxygenases from other filamentous fungi, and contain several conserved motifs, including that for a haem-binding site. Alignment of these sequences with mammalian and bacterial P450 enzymes of known 3-D structure predicts that there is also considerable conservation at the level of secondary structure. Deletion of paxP and paxQ results in mutant strains that accumulate paspaline and 13-desoxypaxilline, respectively. These results confirm that paxP and paxQ are essential for paxilline biosynthesis and that paspaline and 13-desoxypaxilline are the most likely substrates for the corresponding enzymes. Chemical complementation of paxilline biosynthesis in paxG (geranygeranyl diphosphate synthase) and paxP, but not paxQ, mutants by the external addition of 13-desoxypaxilline confirms that PaxG and PaxP precede PaxQ, and are functionally part of the same biosynthetic pathway. A pathway for the biosynthesis of paxilline is proposed on the basis of these and earlier results. Electrophysiological experiments demonstrated that 13-desoxypaxilline is a weak inhibitor of mammalian maxi-K channels (Ki=730 nM) compared to paxilline (Ki=30 nM), indicating that the C-13 OH group of paxilline is crucial for the biological activity of this tremorgenic mycotoxin. Paspaline is essentially inactive as a channel blocker, causing only slight inhibition at concentrations up to 1 microM.
Hormone Replacement Therapy and Alzheimer's Disease: Current State of Knowledge and Implications for Clinical Use
(SAGE Publications, 2024-01) Sayfullaeva, Jessica; McLoughlin, John; Kwakowsky, Andrea; Moreira, Paula I; Avila, Jesus; Galimberti, Daniela; Pappolla, Miguel A; Plascencia-Villa, Germán; Sorensen, Aaron A; Zhu, Xiongwei; Perry, George
Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a progressive neurodegenerative disorder responsible for over half of dementia cases, with two-thirds being women. Growing evidence from preclinical and clinical studies underscores the significance of sex-specific biological mechanisms in shaping AD risk. While older age is the greatest risk factor for AD, other distinct biological mechanisms increase the risk and progression of AD in women including sex hormones, brain structural differences, genetic background, immunomodulation and vascular disorders. Research indicates a correlation between declining estrogen levels during menopause and an increased risk of developing AD, highlighting a possible link with AD pathogenesis. The neuroprotective effects of estrogen vary with the age of treatment initiation, menopause stage, and type. This review assesses clinical and observational studies conducted in women, examining the influence of estrogen on cognitive function or addressing the ongoing question regarding the potential use of hormone replacement therapy (HRT) as a preventive or therapeutic option for AD. This review covers recent literature and discusses the working hypothesis, current use, controversies and challenges regarding HRT in preventing and treating age-related cognitive decline and AD. The available evidence indicates that estrogen plays a significant role in influencing dementia risk, with studies demonstrating both beneficial and detrimental effects of HRT. Recommendations regarding HRT usage should carefully consider the age when the hormonal supplementation is initiated, baseline characteristics such as genotype and cardiovascular health, and treatment duration until this approach can be more thoroughly investigated or progress in the development of alternative treatments can be made.
Access to Endoscopic sinus surgery: Effects of ethnicity and deprivation status in the Waikato region, New Zealand
(New Zealand Demographic Society, 2024) Ratnayake Kumar, Agrani; van der Werf, Bert; Chiang, Annie; Exeter, Daniel J; Wood, Andrew James

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