Not many know that before Dickens became famous as an author, he was a parliamentary reporter. The style he developed there had two major effects: on how he was to write in the future, and on what we expect even today from our parliamentary reporters.

Victoria University Senior Lecturer Dr Nikki Hessell has studied this part of Dickens’s life. She says:

"When he was a parliamentary reporter, Charles Dickens had two styles of reporting: a serious style, where he reported exactly what happened; and a more maverick style, where he lampooned the politicians and made them into types of characters, or caricatures of themselves.

"Dickens was a brilliant shorthand writer, able to actually capture the words as they were spoken. He knew that it was important for people to understand exactly what was said by the politicians. He could recreate a voice, a personality—exactly as that person would speak. This, of course, was to later influence his writing style, making his characters real and enduring.

"Alongside this, he pioneered the satirical side of politics, the kind of writing that has endured and exists even today, where we have journalists known for their own—and often merciless—individual opinions on what takes place in parliament."

Charles Dickens was a parliamentary reporter from 1832 until 1836. In 1836, he started to write The Pickwick Papers, his first novel.

Dr Hessell, from the School of English, Film, Theatre and Media Studies, has recently written a book, Literary Authors, Parliamentary Reporters, Johnson, Coleridge, Hazlitt, Dickens, which was published this year and is available through Cambridge University Press.

Commonly called crayfish, the red rock lobster (Jasus edwardsii) is New Zealand’s most valuable inshore fishery export so there is considerable interest and investment in sustainably harvesting the species.

Senior Lecturer Dr James Bell and his Master’s student Luke Thomas from the School of Biological Sciences are using DNA technology to increase our understanding of the sources of lobster larvae and movement of larvae between red rock lobster populations in New Zealand and Australia.  

Biologically, the rock lobster is a very unusual species in that after fertilised eggs are released from females the larval rock lobsters spend up to 24 months drifting around in the oceans, before finding their way back to rocky habitats. During this time they pass through 11 different larval stages and can potentially travel thousands of kilometres.

Dr Bell says understanding the source of the next generation of any commercial species is of critical importance for its sustainable management.

"The rock lobster presents an interesting challenge with respect to identifying the sources of larvae to harvested populations and larval movement between different locations as it has one of the longest lived larvae of all marine creatures, spending up to two years floating in the oceans before settling.

"This means it is impossible to directly track larval movements so we need to use other tools."

Master’s student Luke Thomas has been developing a series of so-called microsatellite DNA markers to assess variation in the DNA of rock lobsters and therefore larval exchange patterns.  

So far the team has identified genetically distinct and isolated rock lobster populations in the lower South Island, along with evidence that some New Zealand rock lobster populations may be receiving around 10 percent of their larvae from Australia.

"The level of reliance of many rock populations on larvae produced a long distance away needs to be considered further in rock lobster management, as this will help to better understand changes in rock lobster stocks between years," says Dr Bell.

"Especially important is the level of dependence of New Zealand rock lobster populations on larvae from Australia, as any declines in overseas rock lobster populations may possibly have knock on effects for populations here."

Dr Bell and his team are working with the New Zealand Rock Lobster Industry Council (NZRLIC), and have funding from the industry body, the Victoria University Research Fund and economic development agency Grow Wellington.

The research is part of Dr Bell’s ongoing international research programme, in collaboration with other researchers in the School of Biological Sciences, into population connectivity, marine conservation and management.

A Victoria University of Wellington study into the pre-departure experiences of British migrants to New Zealand has shown that it is relatively common for couples to have an unequal desire to move countries.

Researcher Aidan Tabor and her advisor, Dr Taciano Milfont, from Victoria University’s Centre for Applied Cross-Cultural Research in the School of Psychology interviewed 95 United Kingdom residents who were in the process of emigrating to New Zealand.

They found that about one third of the partnered individuals were either an enthusiastic "driver" of the move or a less willing "trailing" spouse.

That disparity between couples can be damaging to psychological health, the researchers say.

The study, one of the first to examine migrants’ experiences before they get to their new home, was carried out as part of Ms Tabor’s Master’s research and was recently published in the International Journal of Psychology.

The findings also show that "drivers" experience more stress and trailing spouses had lower wellbeing than people coming on their own or with an equally enthusiastic partner.

"Emigration involves many logistical, financial and emotional challenges. Normally, spouses provide support to each other during stressful times, but 'drivers' felt they got less support from their less enthusiastic partner," says Ms Tabor.

She notes that enthusiastic migrants are more likely to adapt well and be happy in their new home but it will be harder for those that didn’t want to shift.

What makes the situation even more challenging, she says, is that extended families tended to withdraw support when they heard that their loved ones were moving to New Zealand.

"That’s especially true for people with children. The ones who felt the least support are those who have had to tell grandparents they’re taking the grandchildren to the other side of the world."

The exception is people who tell their families they plan to return to the UK. "In these cases, extended family members were very supportive of the move," Ms Tabor says.

Ms Tabor has first-hand experience of the challenges involved in emigrating. She moved to New Zealand from the United States three years ago with her family.

She is continuing her research, with Dr Milfont as her advisor, through PhD study into how migrants select a destination country including participants from the UK, South Africa and India.

Called Flaunting it on Facebook, the three-year research project is investigating how technologies such as social networking sites and digital phones and cameras have become central to young people’s drinking culture and also to alcohol marketing.

One of the lead researchers on the project, Dr Fiona Hutton from the Institute of Criminology within the School of Social and Cultural Studies, says young people routinely use sites like Facebook to organise drinking events, communicate with each other, and share photos of drinking sessions the next day.

"Those selling alcohol are also heavily employing social networking technologies to encourage consumption," says Dr Hutton.

Examples include alcohol brands, bars and clubs having their own Facebook pages where young people can play games, win prizes and sometimes find photos of themselves uploaded by the bar owners.

"Taking photos during a drinking session is often presented as a service which allows young people to leave their camera at home for the night."

Dr Hutton says although alcohol marketing is seamlessly integrated into social networking sites, a surprising number of young people do not see this as problematic or likely to affect them.

"Some pilot study participants came across as media savvy and you would not expect them to be taken in by the alcohol marketing strategies on Facebook.  However, at the same time, they are likely to be a ‘friend’ of particular brands or their favourite bar or club, and regularly spend time on their sites."

She says researchers hope further analysis of the data gathered will help them better understand why young people appear to engage so readily with this type of online alcohol marketing.

The project is led by Associate Professor Antonia Lyons from Massey University in Wellington. Other lead researchers, along with Dr Hutton, are Dr Ian Goodwin, Associate Professor Tim Mcreanor and Associate Professor Helen Moewaka Barnes from Massey, together with two overseas researchers from the United Kingdom and the United States.

The work has received $865,000 from the Marsden Fund and focuses on young people aged between 18 and 25.

Dr Hutton says the research is breaking new ground in the variety of ways information is being gathered from participants as well as how it is being analysed.

Young people taking part in focus groups or one-on-one interviews are videoed, allowing researchers to look at their expressions and body language while reading a transcript of their talk, and screen capture technology records their online behaviour when on social networking sites.

Dr Hutton says most of the research into young people’s drinking in New Zealand has focused on behaviour rather than the culture associated with it. “There’s also been a big focus on the harms and risks of young people drinking too much but much less is known about the attractions and drivers of drinking and socialising for young people.”

It’s been relatively easy to find study participants which Dr Hutton attributes to a desire among young people to tell their own stories.

"There’s quite a furore around the dangers of young people binge drinking and doom and gloom about the impact of social networking but very few people have asked those at the centre of it what they think."

The study is moving into its third year during which researchers will analyse the data they have found and look at drinking cultures across Pakeha, Maori and Pacifica young people, as well as across genders and socio-economic groups.

Researchers from five different disciplines at Victoria are collaborating to pinpoint the make-up of rodent urine and use the knowledge to create bait that will more effectively attract rats.

The work is led by Dr Wayne Linklater from Victoria’s School of Biological Sciences, and involves researchers with expertise in chemistry, ecology, molecular biology and statistics.

Ultimately, the team hopes to be able to produce a long-lasting substance that will lure rats into traps, allowing the Department of Conservation to accurately gauge numbers in a given area and put appropriate control programmes in place.

One of the team, chemist Dr Rob Keyzers, is helping to analyse what’s in the urine of mice and rats.

Currently, much more is known about mice which excrete relatively large amounts of a distinctive protein in their urine. Dr Keyzers says this Major Urinary Protein, or MUP, is an ideal agent to hold and slowly release pheromones which attract other mice.

"Male rat urine has something similar to the MUP but the pheromones released are different. My work is focused on understanding the unique pheromone compounds in rat urine so we can use them, or a laboratory-created equivalent, in traps."

Dr Keyzers says the beauty of the system is that, as well as using a proven attraction agent like pheromones, the rodent protein releases aromas slowly so traps using them will remain active for a long time.

In addition to analysing rat urine, the researchers are running "choice trials" with rodents to confirm which are the attractive pheromones in rat urine.

Dr Keyzers says if the research is successful the benefits will be two-pronged.

"We want to come up with a better rodent trap but we also want to give DOC the means to carry out population tests, which is where Professor Shirley Pledger, our statistical researcher, comes in.

"If we can design a device that reliably attracts rats and also tags them with some kind of mark before they exit, we’ll be able to get a more accurate sample of exactly how many rats are in the immediate vicinity and then use statistical modelling to assess the wider population."

The research has funding from Viclink, Victoria University’s commercialisation company, and the Department of Conservation.

Dr Keyzers says the only downside of the research project is the “reek” of rodent urine.

"The amounts they excrete are tiny but it has a really foul odour."

A focus of Dr Keyzers previous research is understanding the volatile, sulphur-containing molecules that give wine its flavour and aroma.

It may seem a far cry from profiling rodent urine but Dr Keyzers says both areas of research are about identifying and analysing naturally occurring molecules and using them to achieve a desired outcome. With wine, he says, that means ultimately being able to design flavour and aroma profiles to target the palates of consumers in specific export markets.

This was the finding of Victoria University PhD graduate Dr Edgar Rodriguez Ramirez, who explored the concept of surprise to pinpoint common design strategies that work.

"Surprise gives a sense of novelty that we as humans are hard-wired to find interesting and often attractive," he says.

One of the practical outcomes of his research is a set of 25 pocket-sized cards for practicing designers and design students which he is currently working on commercialising through an educational publishing house. Each card includes tips on generating surprise, such as aspects to consider when designing and how designers can know when they're on the right track.

Also a Senior Lecturer and Postgraduate Research Coordinator at Victoria University's School of Design, Dr Rodriguez Ramirez says he has already trialled the cards with his students, with considerable success. They were able to shuffle through them as a quick way of triggering ideas.

One of his classes was assigned the task of designing lamps. Resulting projects using the element of surprise ranged from a lamp which grows as if waking up when turned on, to a blue electroluminescent wire used to create a path of light for a child to go to the bathroom and back to their bedroom at night, taking inspiration from the 'Hansel and Gretel' fairytale.

Dr Rodriguez Ramirez developed his theories on surprise by interviewing 35 industrial designers from around the world, as well as analysing the effectiveness of some of his own design projects. He also conducted participatory design research with Samsung Electronics in Seoul, South Korea and widely renowned design studio Santachiara in Milan, Italy, among others. 

"In my work, I look at how people use the objects I am designing and try to surprise them by breaking their expectations," he says.

"This approach does have some exceptions, however. For instance, when I explored designing mousetraps and tested people's reactions to them I found that surprise was good for people who were comfortable with mousetraps to start with, but actually made it worse for those who had been uncomfortable at the outset." 

Dr Rodriguez Ramirez's PhD was supervised by Professor Simon Fraser and Dr Anne Galloway from Victoria University and Dr Kees Overbeeke as an Honorary Research Associate from the University of Technology Eindhoven, The Netherlands. He received a Victoria University PhD Scholarship.

The suite of four exhibitions is collectively called 'Camera Work' to suggest the serious and sustained ways in which artists use their equipment to record and respond to their subjects.

"This exhibition demonstrates how photography is used as a means of research," says Adam Art Gallery curator Laura Preston.

"But the results don't assume that photographs provide us with all the answers; rather they show us the scope and limits of what a photograph can show and tell."

Recording actions, exposing clandestine encounters, capturing a social scene, or testing how we make sense of specific sites are the activities engaged by these artists, all of whom have developed reputations for their installations and series.

Below is a brief overview of the works that will be on display.

Simon Starling Autoxylopyrocycloboros
Turner Prize winning British artist Simon Starling presents a photographic slide projection documenting a strange act of sabotage on a loch in Scotland.

Kohei Yoshiyuki The Park
A rare opportunity to see Japanese photographer Kohei Yoshiyuki’s notorious series, The Park, which documents late-night trysts in parks around Tokyo that have been reprinted for the first time since their first showing in the 1970s.

John Lake The Campus
Wellington-based artist John Lake captures life on campus at Victoria University during 2011, a project commissioned for the university’s art collection.

Fiona Amundsen The First City in History
New Zealand artist Fiona Amundsen focuses on the historic centre of Hiroshima to see how that city memorialises its traumatic past, yet shows us how hard it is to grasp the enormity of the destruction caused by the first atomic bomb ever to be detonated in wartime.

What: Camera Work
Where: Adam Art Gallery
When: 24 January-15 April 2012
Free entry

The Park is a joint project with the Centre of Contemporary Photography, Melbourne and IMA, Brisbane. Fiona Amundsen's The First City in History is supported by Asia New Zealand Foundation, New Zealand Japan Exchange Programme and AUT University. John Lake's project was commissioned for the Victoria University of Wellington Art Collection in 2011.Simon Starling's work is staged in partnership with The Physics Room, Christchurch.

www.adamartgallery.org.nz 

The Centre was placed 28th in the top 30 best university affiliated think tanks in The Global Go To Think Tanks Report 2011. The report is compiled by the Think Tanks and Civil Societies Program at the University of Pennsylvania.

The Centre for Strategic Studies focuses on research, teaching and public dialogue on strategic and security issues, in particular global security challenges, strategic change in the Asia Pacific region and New Zealand’s security priorities.

http://www.victoria.ac.nz/css/

Google gave Victoria’s School of Engineering and Computer Science 50 Android Nexus 1 phones for student research. The deal was struck, says Senior Lecturer Ian Welch, "through a Victoria alumnus who put us in touch with Android developers at the US-based Internet multinational."

The state-of-the-art phones have 3G data capability, are GPS-enabled, and include inertial sensors to detect movement.

The new devices have been used in second and third year Network Engineering courses taught by Dr Kris Bubendorfer, Andy Linton and Dr Welch.

Dr Welch says the students developed some fantastic applications with the technology.

That included systems for viewing public transport information, locating lost objects and people needing to be rescued, and a fitness monitoring tool.

"Another innovative idea was creating an application that allowed workers to sign in and out so it was quite clear exactly how long they had been there," says Dr Welch.

The Android phones are ideally suited to co-ordinating a group of people with one student developing a system for tradespeople working in a town or suburb to pick up supplies for each other.

"When they needed something from town, they could post a message on the phone and if there was another tradesperson already at the store they could collect the items for them."

There were no strings attached to the gift, although Dr Welch says Google is interested in hearing the results of the students’ work.

And there is also interest from businesses in Wellington who are looking for staff to help with mobile applications.

"This is pretty new technology and there is nowhere else in Wellington where you can experiment with it.

"With this type of interaction, our students are developing the technical expertise required by employers and will be able to make a difference from day one in the workforce."

Dr Bubendorfer says having access to the phones inspired students and staff alike.

"It’s great to see students grasp a concept and then get out there and develop their own novel applications. But it was also rewarding for us. Using the phones was probably the most fun I’ve had in a university course. I left some of those lectures really buzzing."

Victoria is the only university in New Zealand to offer specialisation in Network Engineering, a programme in which students study the design and implementation of modern forms of communications technology.

The other two digital engineering programmes offered at Victoria are Electronic and Computer Systems Engineering and Software Engineering.

"Students taking these courses come out equipped to tackle engineering problems of the 21st century," says Dr Welch.

Dr Ron Fischer from the School of Psychology and Master’s graduate Seini O’Connor conducted the study which has been published by the Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology.

Their findings challenge a widely held view that there is a culture of corruption in traditional societies and that societies with higher corruption should import institutions from, and emulate the values of, low corruption societies says Dr Fischer.

"Within countries, the one thing that makes a difference over time is wealth. The results suggest we don’t have to modernise societies or change traditional systems to reduce corruption."

Seini O’Connor says there are lots of reasons for corrupt behaviour.

"In low income countries, the poorest people may be stealing or paying bribes to get services because they are desperate, and the rich may be demanding bribes and taking kick-backs on big contracts because they are powerful and can get away with it.

"It’s all about the opportunities and incentives people face."

The global study examined data from 1980 to 2008 and is one of the only longitudinal studies that investigates both cultural and economic factors influencing levels of corruption. In addition to income levels (GDP per capita), the researchers compared other factors such as government spending (as in indicator of government size), the voting system and participation rates (as indicators of democracy), and social values.

They also looked at what separates countries with higher and lower levels of corruption.

Dr Fischer says they found those which are wealthier, value things like quality of life, free expression and tolerance, and have larger governments, tend to be less corrupt.

Larger governments are sometimes thought to provide opportunities for corruption because more people are able to have a "finger in the pie" but the Victoria research found this wasn’t true.

"It’s about the size of government not whether it is democratic. Countries with larger governments are likely to provide more social services and employment opportunities and have more law enforcement agents. That reduces the need for corruption and increases the chance of being caught," says Dr Fischer.

Dr Fischer is continuing his research into corruption with collaborators in Brazil where the team is investigating how media images influence the likelihood of people engaging in corrupt behaviour.

"We’re looking at whether media coverage of corrupt politicians or police officers, for example, makes the behaviour more palatable."

Although 80 percent of searches immediately find what people are looking for, sometimes it takes hours to find the right page, says Dr Daniel Crabtree, who graduated with a PhD in Computer Science at Victoria’s December Graduation.

He designed new algorithms that give search engines a better understanding of the meaning behind a user's queries.

"Search engines still throw up mixed results with ambiguous search terms. If you searched for ‘jaguar’ for instance, it could refer to the animal, the car, even an Apple operating system or ‘80s video game console.

"Search engines currently don’t deal with that ambiguity because they simply search for web pages that contain the words you’ve entered.”

He says the algorithms he has developed group pages together—which is called clustering—to separate different interpretations.

The algorithms use statistical language models to ‘see through’ the search terms and capture the intended meaning of a query.

"One aspect of the model for instance is that it recognises word order. If you typed in ‘New Zealand air’, for example, it would cluster results around air quality rather than Air New Zealand which is the search result you get from Google."

Dr Crabtree says his model aims to help search engines understand queries and group related words together to deliver what someone is “really searching for”.

"Search engines don’t appear to have improved that much in recent years. That’s partly because they’ve been focused on other issues, such as revising their search algorithms to stop spam or companies ‘gaming’ the search results," he says.

Although his model has been tested on a small scale and he has spoken to major search engines about his research, none of them appear to be using it yet.

"The major search engines seemed interested in hiring me a few years ago, but I’m keen to continue working on some of my other projects," says Dr Crabtree who started his first web business when he was 13 and attended Stanford Business School in 2008.

Although it has changed over the years, his original business continues as Big Fun Town— www.bigfuntown.com — a website featuring free browser-based games.

Since doing his PhD, he has been working on a new web concept—“focused on finding and sharing information on the internet”—codenamed Project Mandelbrot.

Dr Bronwyn Kivell, a Senior Lecturer in the School of Biological Sciences, is screening a number of anti-addiction compounds that may ultimately form the basis of medications that help reduce cravings and prevent relapses for people addicted to psychostimulants such as cocaine or methamphetamine.

Collaborating with a medicinal chemist at the University of Kansas in the United States along with her Victoria University colleague Professor Susan Schenk, Dr Kivell is investigating ways of targeting a protein in the brain, called the kappa opioid receptor, which can alter a person’s perception of mood, reward and pain.

The researchers are focused on a Mexican herb called salvia divinorum, also known as Mexican or Tijuana tripping weed, a powerful hallucinogen that has been chewed by Mexican Indians for centuries.

Most hallucinogenic substances affect serotonin, a neurotransmitter in the body that influences people’s sense of well-being, but Dr Kivell says salvia is different.

"It has a unique structure and contains compounds that we think could have anti-addictive properties."

The compounds are being developed at the University of Kansas and tested at Victoria University.

A usual problem with compounds that target kappa opioid receptors, says Dr Kivell, is their tendency to have extreme side effects such as nausea and depression.

"However, some of those we are testing have much milder side effects."

Another strand of Dr Kivell’s research targets more effective therapies to help people stop smoking. She says while nicotine is the major addictive component in cigarettes, there are many other things in cigarette smoke that contribute to addiction.

Her research, being carried out with Crown Research Institute ESR (Institute of Environmental Science and Research), is studying the role of a number of minor tobacco alkaloids.

"Most tools to help people quit smoking are based on nicotine replacement and have relatively low success rates. Our goal is to work out if it is feasible to develop other anti-smoking aids that target proteins in the brain that are involved in addiction."

Dr Kivell, who completed her PhD at Victoria, has also carried out drug addiction research at the National Institute on Drug Abuse in Baltimore in the United States.

She returned to Victoria to work on a ground-breaking project that is looking at both the cell biology and the behavioural patterns resulting from long-term use of MDMA or ecstasy.

The work is a collaboration between Victoria’s School of Biological Sciences and School of Psychology and aims to better understand the changes ecstasy causes in the brain’s neurochemistry and its impact on behaviour.

"Drug addiction research is exciting science and it’s also very relevant. Banning every mind-altering drug is not going to work so we need to find therapies to help people with their addiction.

"It’s a very complex field and there is a lot yet to understand about why some people who take drugs get addicted and others don’t."

Dr Kivell has had funding from the Neurological Foundation, the Wellington Medical Research Foundation and the Health Research Council (HRC).