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Despite one-third of New Zealand's landmass being protected as public conservation land, the country still faces significant conservation challenges. Nearly 50% of the country's landmass has been converted to pastoral farming, and biological invasions pose a sustained and growing threat to remaining biodiversity across all land tenures. Managing and protecting biodiversity on-farm provides vast opportunities to create nature-rich pastoral landscapes. A key step towards bringing about necessary behaviour change to achieve this is increasing insights into farmers' attitudes towards the value of native biodiversity on their farms. Using a questionnaire underpinned by the Theory of Planned Behaviour, we surveyed 500 sheep and beef farmers from around New Zealand as to their beliefs and attitudes and perceived barriers relating to the protection and management of native biodiversity on their farm. Although the survey respondents were largely homogenous, the surveyed group of farmers were heterogeneous in their responses. When asked about advantages associated with managing and protecting native biodiversity on their farms, 690 distinct responses were provided, spanning social (47%), environmental (34%), practical (10%), and economic (2%) themes. In contrast, identified disadvantages were fewer (530 distinct responses) and less wide-ranging in scope, clustering around economic (44%), practical (26%) and social (25%) themes. Nearly three times as many farmers stated there were no disadvantages (22%) than stated there were no advantages (8%). However, the most frequently cited disadvantages were cost and time, which were also commonly cited as barriers to managing biodiversity. Our study illustrates that sheep and beef farmers perceive may advantages in maintaining native biodiversity on-farm, but there is a clear desire for greater support in overcoming identified barriers and this will require a targeted policy response. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Some conventional building design, construction and maintenance practices create conditions that are capable of causing illness in healthy individuals or exacerbating illness in already sensitized individuals. Staying in faulty building environments may unnecessarily prolong environmental-related illness. Physician and patient awareness of such common building failures may help to diagnose environmental triggers of current illness. Architects would benefit from collaboration with environmental physicians to understand the importance of healthier building design to building occupants. Architectural education and practice is slowly incorporating better methods, often in the context of greening and sustainability. Architects are presently being advised that the needs of approximately 15% of the general population who are significantly sensitive cannot be ignored in building design. The author reviews a number of building failures and itemizes a set of relatively simple principles and design concepts that would help create new and renovated buildings that are healthier than current buildings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: In considering social, economic and ecological impacts of new technologies it is essential to start from an understanding of human nature. This paper explores this issue drawing out some implications for ecological and neoclassical economics. The paper presents two key arguments. First, we argue that there is a growing tension between our evolved human nature and social structures and our emerging technological prowess. Modern technologies give us increasing power to manipulate the very axes of nature: space, time, energy, matter, and life. Technologies are now so powerful they give us abilities our ancestors would consider godlike. The question is posed: Are humans ready to wield the power of the gods? We have the knowledge, but do we have the wisdom? The myth of Prometheus and Pandora is considered as a metaphor for the interaction between technology, nature and universal aspects of human nature developed over eons of evolution. Second, we argue that even a ‘technologically optimistic’ scenario (employed by some economists) may not actually deliver Utopian outcomes. With technological advancement and diffusion there is a “technological trickle down effect” whereby potent technologies, once available only to governments and powerful elites, become available to greater numbers of groups and individuals. The more accessible a technology, the more likely its social and ecological impacts will be shaped by the full range and extremes of human nature. These issues have implications for the development and regulation of Promethean technologies such as nuclear energy, genetic engineering and nanotechnology; technologies with unprecedented power and reach through nature. Development and diffusion of such technologies may also have implications for the ethics of the social structure of society. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Identifies common causes of mold growth in buildings. Principles essential for preventing mold contamination indoors; Need for physicians and healthcare workers to be aware of the conditions within buildings; Results of an inadequate building maintenance.

Sample-weighted mean inter-rater reliabilities were similar for both situational and past behavior questions, provided that descriptively-anchored rating scales were used (.79 and .77, respectively), although they were slightly lower (.73) for past behavior question studies lacking such rating scales. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract The world needs to produce more food, more sustainably, on a planet with scarce resources and under changing climate. The advancement of technologies, computing power and analytics offers the possibility that 'digitalisation of agriculture' can provide new solutions to these complex challenges. The role of science is to evidence and support the design and use of digital technologies to realise these beneficial outcomes and avoid unintended consequences. This requires consideration of data governance design to enable the benefits of digital agriculture to be shared equitably and how digital agriculture could change agricultural business models; that is, farm structures, the value chain and stakeholder roles, networks and power relations, and governance. We argue that this requires transdisciplinary research (at pace), including explicit consideration of the aforementioned socio‐ethical issues, data governance and business models, alongside addressing technical issues, as we now have to simultaneously deal with multiple interacting outcomes in complex technical, social, economic and governance systems. The exciting prospect is that digitalisation of science can enable this new, and more effective, way of working. The question then becomes: how can we effectively accelerate this shift to a new way of working in agricultural science? As well as identifying key research areas, we suggest organisational changes will be required: new research business models, agile project management; new skills and capabilities; and collaborations with new partners to develop 'technology ecosystems'. © 2018 The Authors. © 2018 The Authors. Journal of The Science of Food and Agriculture published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Society of Chemical Industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A recently implemented research and development (R&D) programme in New Zealand is attempting to implement co-innovation principles throughout the country's agricultural sector. It is based on an agricultural innovation systems (AIS) approach, using five innovation platforms (IPs) based in the leading industries, plus a national-level IP. This paper presents and analyses the emerging challenges of operationalizing transdisciplinary research connected to co-innovation in the context of the programme. The main challenges relate to managing the complexity of a multi-stakeholder network, aligning the formal procedures for research funding and IPs with a co-innovation approach that requires flexibility, and changing participants' framing of innovation from linear to interactive models. Our conclusion is that 'learning by doing' is essential in operationalizing coinnovation. Its practical implications still need to be translated into institutional changes in the national R&D structures so that policies, instruments and incentives enable co-innovation. It is envisaged that the higher-level innovation platform will drive these changes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The exploratory study aimed to understand the range of community responses to three pest eradication technologies proposed for use in New Zealand and to examine community perceptions of past incursion responses, with the aim of improving future responses. Qualitative techniques were used to elicit information from a small group of people selected from the general public, the Department of Conservation and three government councils. Participants were fairly trusting of the basic information provided to them about the three technologies, and as a result were generally accepting of aerial spraying of pheromones and sterile insect technology. However, the use of aerial sprays presented some concerns. More in-depth information, the manner in which it was presented, and how the community was be included in the decision-making process were likely to be the significant influences in predicting the public response to eradication attempts in the future. Recommendations for future research are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is strong support for the view that the ventricular myocardium has a laminar organization in which myocytes are grouped into branching layers separated by cleavage planes. However, understanding of the extent and functional implications of this architecture has been limited by the lack of a systematic three-dimensional description of the organization of myocytes and associated perimysial collagen. We imaged myocytes and collagen across the left ventricular wall at high resolution in seven normal rat hearts using extended volume confocal microscopy. We developed novel reconstruction and segmentation techniques necessary for the quantitative analysis of three-dimensional myocyte and perimysial collagen organization. The results confirm that perimysial collagen has an ordered arrangement and that it defines a laminar organization. Perimysial collagen is composed of three distinct forms: extensive meshwork on laminar surfaces, convoluted fibers connecting adjacent layers, and longitudinal cords. While myolaminae are the principal form of structural organization throughout most of the wall, they are not seen in the subepicardium, where perimysial collagen is present only as longitudinal cords. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reflexive monitors (RMs) have been found to be vital to the success of co-innovation projects. While the practices utilized by RMs have been examined in various contexts, we examine the roles they have played in a new cultural context in New Zealand (NZ) and how it has been possible to embed these roles in a diverse range of innovation projects in the primary sector. This article will address this gap in terms of explaining the case-specific behaviours that have been utilized in six different co-innovation projects in the NZ agricultural innovation system. Qualitative data from interviews with five RMs will be used to argue that RMs are a key component in the co-innovation process and are required to play diverse roles depending on project circumstances to enhance system innovation - for example, devil's advocate, project supporter, consensus seeker, conflict mediator, critical enquirer or encourager. The findings have implications for the characteristics that make a good RM in terms of openness to new ideas, facilitation and critical thinking skills and how they report on the practice of monitoring a project reflexively utilizing monitoring and evaluation techniques. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]