Search Marsden awards 2008–2017

Recipient(s): Dr CS Law | PI | NIWA - The National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research Ltd
Dr E Maas | PI | NIWA - The National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research Ltd

Public Summary: We hypothesise that increased bacterial exo-enzyme activity in a high CO2 ocean will decrease the carbon pump to the deep ocean. Acidification of the ocean is a result of increasing CO2 in the atmosphere that is now affecting the ecology of the ocean. However, the impact of high CO2 in the oceans on marine bacteria is not well understood or researched, even though marine bacteria play a fundamental role in cycling nutrients and transferring carbon to the deep ocean. We propose to investigate this using both CO2 manipulation incubations, and also natural areas of high CO2 in the Bay of Plenty. This combined approach is a powerful one that overcomes the limitation of short-term laboratory CO2 incubations, and will enable prediction and modelling of changes in bacterial activity in the future ocean.

Recipient(s): Dr MJ Vandergoes | PI | GNS Science
Dr AC Dieffenbacher-Krall | AI | University of Maine
Prof RM Newnham | AI | Victoria University of Wellington
Prof L Schwark | AI | University of Kiel
Dr K Zink | AI | GNS Science

Public Summary: Accurate reconstructions of past temperature change from Southern Hemisphere locations are scarce and are needed urgently to provide a long term context to current climate change, test leading hypotheses about possible causal mechanisms, and to constrain models used to predict future climate. Recent progress has been made with new models for quantitative climate reconstruction using biological indicators including pollen and insect remains. A key question is whether these reconstructions can be validated and their precision improved by applying additional quantitative techniques. A recently developed method using microbial membrane lipids in lake sediments as a molecular paleothermometer has the potential to enable more precise paleotemperature reconstructions than have been previously achieved in New Zealand. The proposed research will establish and apply this technique to New Zealand paleoclimate sites that span the last glaciation. This innovative approach will increase the precision of New Zealand’s paleoclimate estimates and address issues relating to the timing, magnitude and variability of last glaciation climate change. The results will allow for better integration of terrestrial and marine reconstructions and more robust climate correlation between the northern and the southern hemispheres.

Recipient(s): Dr E Summers-Bremner | PI | The University of Auckland

Public Summary: What kind of fiction does war produce? Can fiction deliver truths about trauma when other forms cannot? How does it respond to everyday concerns? The public narrative of the Blitz describes English heroism in the face of German bombing 1940-41. The myth has elements of truth, but ignores evidence of a Britain full of anxieties. Concurrently the pioneering research group Mass-Observation asked ordinary people to write diary accounts of what they heard and saw. Their focus was on people's 'feelings, their worries, frustrations, hopes, desires and fears.' Updating participant records decades later, M-O found people typically revised their memories to match the public narrative of resilience. This study proposes a new archive with which to contextualise the M-O records: the period's experimental fiction. A trauma studies perspective historically developed in response to war enables a new understanding of modernism that reads literary fiction alongside diary accounts as distinctive responses to the same overdetermined phenomena. Comparing formally innovative novels and stories--works which make the world strange--with first person accounts of deeply estranging wartime events will enable clearer assessment of the extent to which a national literature can assist with managing the historical fallout of a changing culture.

Recipient(s): Assoc Prof S Brown | PI | University of Canterbury
Prof KMAJ Temst | AI | Katholieke Universiteit Leuven
Prof MJM van Bael | AI | Katholieke Universiteit Leuven

Public Summary: Perhaps surprisingly, the patterns that raindrops make on a concrete path and the propagation of a fire through a forest are linked: the underlying processes are random and can be described by “percolation theory”. The same theory describes many other important physical processes in which the connectivity between objects (like raindrops or trees) is important. But as we move into an era where nanotechnology becomes pervasive, fundamental quantum mechanics becomes more and more important: quantum tunneling can have very significant effects on nanoscale systems. This is never more true than in percolating assemblies of nanoparticles, where tunneling allows electrons to hop between particles even when they are not directly connected.

Tunneling processes in percolating systems are responsible for many intriguing effects which are yet to be understood. By exploring these fundamental conduction processes in random assemblies of nanoparticles we will resolve key questions in two important fields. Why do percolating-tunneling assemblies behave like switches, and could these novel switching processes be employed in new transistor technologies? How small can a superconductor be before it loses its superconductivity, and why should assemblies of superconducting particles appear to be insulating?

Recipient(s): Prof HJ Van Heerde | PI | University of Waikato
Prof MG Dekimpe | PI | Tilburg University
Prof JEM Steenkamp | PI | The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Public Summary: Can firms spend their way out of a recession? The typical reaction of firms during a recession is to slash investments in product innovation, advertising and sales promotions, because these marketing expenses are often the easiest to cut. However, some economic theories now suggest that it is actually better to increase marketing investments during recessions. These theories claim that the return on these types of investment is higher during the recession phase of international business cycles. Although there has been intense theoretical debate on these conflicting views, to date, they have not been tested empirically. To resolve this conundrum, our study addresses the research question: 'Are marketing investments more effective during recessions than during booms?'.

To address our research question, we develop a new theory on how the return on investments in innovation, advertising and sales promotion varies across business cycles. To test this theory, we develop a novel econometric model and apply it to an unrivalled dataset covering more than two decades of weekly data for hundreds of New Zealand fast moving consumer good categories and thousands of brands. Our research will provide insights into how New Zealand firms can better navigate through economic turbulence using marketing investments.

Recipient(s): Assoc Prof P Dearden | PI | University of Otago
Dr MJ Wilson | AI | University of Otago

Public Summary: Studies of the genetics of the evolution of animal form suggest that the diversity of life arises from the use of conserved genes in different ways. Genes don’t, however, act in isolation, but in complex networks. In this proposal we aim to understand how genes change their role in the evolution of a complex network, insect segmentation, how that change is buffered by the network, and how that might constrain, or confer diversity. This project aims to explore the evolution of animal diversity, allowing us to better understand how evolution shapes all species, including ourselves.

Recipient(s): Dr AM Galloway | PI | Victoria University of Wellington

Public Summary: Emerging communications technologies promise a world where people, places and objects are connected. In our project we aim to understand one way by which people and animals are connected. We will look at the production and consumption of New Zealand 'ethical' wool, and compare the marketers' ideal of the high country sheep station with the reality. We will present scenarios describing how the roles and relationships might change with the future implementation of networked tracking technologies. A set of short videos will be produced that explore possible futures for wool production and consumption by presenting fictional scenarios of interactions between people, animals and new technologies. Photographs of real life on a sheep station will be juxtaposed with fictional videos through a video installation and photography exhibition at Victoria University of Wellington's School of Design. The visual exhibition will also be presented online through a website that allows for public comment and discussion. Ultimately, we seek to understand the role that cultural and design research can play in supporting public understandings of new technologies and promoting more active participation in their development and implementation. The research will also produce critical insights for New Zealand's wool industry and government policymakers.

Recipient(s): Dr SG Telfer | PI | Massey University

Public Summary: Research on metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) is one of the most exciting and dynamic areas of modern chemical science. A key feature of these materials is their porosity, which allows small molecules to freely diffuse in and out via the voids and channels. Real-world applications in gas sorption, separations, catalysis, and drug delivery are rapidly emerging. We plan to pioneer a general method for the synthesis of open, ultraporous MOFs with unique attributes by creating large pockets of empty space in pre-formed frameworks. We will use a recent breakthrough made in our laboratory as a springboard for this research project. This breakthrough came in the form of a successful strategy for combating the natural tendency for frameworks to interpenetrate. Bulky units are appended to the ligands struts, which are specifically designed to 'self-destruct' upon heating to produce small, volatile molecules that escape from the material. Thus 'nothing' is created out of 'something' to enhance the porosity of these materials. We will capitalise on this for the development of catalysts that facilitate ‘greener’ industrial processes and materials that are able to sieve carbon dioxide from streams of gas.

Recipient(s): Dr JW Pickering | PI | University of Otago

Public Summary: Kidney failure (acute kidney injury) in critically ill patients is detected by change in plasma creatinine concentration. These changes are compromised by fluid resuscitation, the normal medical practice in these patients. Consequently, diagnosis may be delayed or missed altogether. We will model plasma creatinine concentrations in response to fluid input using an iterative model to derive information about an individual patient’s kidney function and test the model for association with multiple acute kidney injury biomarkers, patient demographics and comorbidities. This model will predict kidney failure earlier than currently detected by plasma creatinine alone and further understanding on the pathophysiology of acute kidney injury and recovery. We will test the model’s ability to predict clinical outcome including further changes in plasma creatinine, need for renal replacement therapy, and death. We will extend the model to investigate the association between fluid input and urine output and use this association to improve the ability of novel acute kidney injury biomarkers to predict adverse outcomes. It is anticipated that the model will help facilitate early detection of kidney failure, optimisation of fluids to preserve function, and pharmaceutical intervention.

Recipient(s): Dr RA Zajac | PI | University of Otago
Prof RM Henaghan | AI | University of Otago
Prof MB Powell | AI | Deakin University

Public Summary: As more and more child witnesses take the stand, researchers have devoted increasing attention to children’s ability to testify in a legal system created by adults, for adults. Although numerous countries – including New Zealand – have reformed the way that they elicit primary evidence from children, cross-examination, during which the opposing lawyer attempts to discredit the child, has been largely ignored. Cross-examination is often described as a “how not to” of child interviewing because it typically involves linguistically complex, leading and confrontational questions. Our research is unique in that, as well as studying the questions asked during courtroom cross-examinations, we have also studied children’s responses. Furthermore, we have taken cross-examination questions into the laboratory to test their effect on the accuracy of children’s eyewitness testimony. We have now repeatedly shown that children experience considerable difficulty remaining accurate when cross-examined. Because cross-examination is unlikely to undergo substantial reform, we have developed a brief preparation intervention that shows great promise as a means to facilitate reliable and accurate testimony. We propose a series of laboratory studies to establish the conditions under which our intervention is most successful, followed by a field study to pilot the intervention with child witnesses in criminal trials.