Tuwhera Research Repository

The Tuwhera Research Repository provides sustainable open access and archiving to a broad range of AUT produced research - theses, research outputs and datasets.

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Access status: Open Access ,
Investigation into the Modulatory Effects of Kawakawa Extract on Macrophage Functions
(Auckland University of Technology, 2026) Hu, Yanfang; Chang, Joe; Furuya, Yoichi
Macrophage activation is essential for innate immune defence; however, excessive or prolonged activation contributes to chronic inflammation and tissue damage. Kawakawa (Piper excelsum), a medicinal plant traditionally used in rongoā Māori in Aotearoa New Zealand, contains bioactive compounds with reported anti-inflammatory properties, although its immunomodulatory effects on macrophages remain incompletely understood. This study investigated the concentration-, time-, stimulus-, and treatment-timing-dependent effects of a hydroethanolic kawakawa leaf extract in RAW 264.7 macrophages stimulated with lipopolysaccharide (LPS), interferon-gamma (IFN-γ), or a combination of LPS and IFN-γ. Cell viability was assessed using trypan blue exclusion and the MTT assay, while nitrite accumulation, used as an indirect indicator of nitric oxide (NO) production, was quantified via the Griess assay. Kawakawa extract did not significantly affect macrophage viability across the concentrations tested in most conditions, indicating that the observed biological effects were generally not attributable to overt cytotoxicity. In the LPS-induced inflammation model, significant reductions in NO production were observed following pre-treatment and co-treatment with 100 μg/mL kawakawa extract (p < 0.001). Under the IFN-γ stimulation, the inhibitory effects of the extract were observed under both pre-treatment and co-treatment conditions after 48 hours (p < 0.01), suggesting a delayed anti-inflammatory response compared with the LPS model. For LPS + IFN-γ-stimulated macrophages, kawakawa extract produced the greatest inhibition under co-treatment conditions (p < 0.001). Across all treatment strategies, pre-treatment and co-treatment generally produced stronger inhibitory effects than post-treatment, although the magnitude and statistical significance of these responses varied according to inflammatory stimulus, incubation time, and experimental endpoint. MTT-reducing activity was not consistently affected by kawakawa treatment, with significant reductions observed under selected conditions at the highest concentration tested. In conclusion, hydroethanolic kawakawa leaf extract modulated inflammatory nitrite accumulation in activated RAW 264.7 macrophages while generally maintaining cell viability across most experimental conditions. The findings indicate that its biological activity depends on extract concentration, inflammatory stimulus, treatment timing, and incubation period, with greater inhibitory effects observed when the extract was administered before or concurrently with inflammatory stimulation. These results provide experimental evidence supporting the immunomodulatory potential of kawakawa and establish a foundation for future studies using chemically standardised extracts to identify the active constituents, uncover the molecular mechanisms, and evaluate its potential therapeutic applications.
Access status: Restricted ,
Thorn Hall
(Auckland University of Technology, 2026) Thomas, Mona Cheyenne; Pamatatau, Richard
Thorn Hall is a work of speculative fiction set within a haunted dormitory at a former missionary boarding school in Aotearoa New Zealand. The narrative follows Deia, a young Māori woman whose ability to see, hear, and physically experience ghosts positions her within a continuum of Indigenous knowledge systems that have long recognised the presence and persistence of the unseen. In this context, haunting is immediate, embodied, and inseparable from the histories the institution attempts to contain. As Deia’s presence intensifies the manifestations within Theresa Hall, the spirits grow increasingly hostile, drawing power from her permeability to what the building holds. The haunting initially gathers around a monstrous feminine presence that emerges during moments of acute violence. While it’s first read as a threat, this entity is later revealed as protective, positioning itself against two more insidious figures: the ghosts of a sexually abusive headmaster and a religiously punitive woman. These horrors are positioned to reflect the documented violences embedded within missionary education systems that sought to discipline, suppress, and restructure Māori life under Western religious authority. Theresa Hall doesn’t merely house these histories, it reproduces them. The novel’s horror operates across sexuality, indigeneity, and institutional control, but it’s within these intersections that resistance also forms. Deia’s queerness and her Māori identity mark her within a framework that’s historically policed both body and belief. Yet her relationship with Juno establishes an alternative structure grounded in whakapapa, reciprocity, and care. Through this connection, and through her engagement with Māori cosmology, Deia’s sensitivity is no longer framed as instability, but recognised as inheritance, a continuation of ways of knowing that colonial systems have consistently attempted to discredit yet have never succeeded in extinguishing. By merging supernatural horror with Indigenous epistemology and queer romance, Thorn Hall positions haunting as both trauma and testimony, exploring how reclamation of identity becomes an act of resistance against historical erasure. Through its engagement with Gothic space, supernatural embodiment, and Indigenous relational frameworks, Thorn Hall refuses the idea that institutions such as Theresa Hall can be separated from the conditions that produced them. The building isn’t a neutral structure altered by harm, but an extension of a system that encoded discipline, surveillance, and control into its foundations. Its architecture maintains that authority, its ghosts enforce it, and its contemporary language of safety fails to undo it. The novel’s horror emerges from this recognition: the institution can’t be made safe because its violence isn’t incidental but structural. The final image of the feminine apparition, now appearing as a young girl, brings this argument into focus. When Deia states, “She’s me,” the recognition collapses the distance between past and present, between victim and witness. This isn’t a simple metaphor, but an acknowledgment that the violence held within the institution isn’t separate from the lives shaped in its aftermath. The figure in the window reflects both what’s been endured and what would continue if the structure remained. In naming the girl as herself, Deia refuses the fragmentation imposed by the institution and asserts continuity where erasure was intended. Thorn Hall doesn’t conclude with restoration, but with rupture. The destruction of Theresa Hall is the only action that interrupts the authority it continues to hold over both the living and the dead. Institutions founded on colonisation, religious control, and racialised discipline can’t be repaired into safety. They must be dismantled. In this way, the novel positions survival not as adaptation to oppressive systems, but as the refusal to remain within them.
Access status: Open Access ,
Assessing In-Flight Food Waste Management Practices of Major Airlines Operating Direct Flights to Auckland: A Comparative Study Under New Zealand’s Border Security
(Auckland University of Technology, 2026) Dubey, Yash; Harkison, Tracy
In-flight food waste has become an important environmental, operational, and biosecurity challenge for the international aviation industry. This study examined how major airlines operating direct flights to Auckland, New Zealand (Air New Zealand, Emirates, Qantas, Singapore Airlines, and China Southern Airlines) manage in-flight food waste within New Zealand's stringent biosecurity framework and how these practices align with broader sustainability and Circular Economy objectives. Guided by the Circular Economy framework, the research adopted an interpretivist qualitative case study design based exclusively on secondary documentary data. Documentary evidence was collected from airline sustainability reports, annual reports, regulatory publications, airport operational documents, and industry reports. The data were analysed using hybrid thematic analysis, combining deductive and limited inductive coding with the support of NVivo 15.4. The analysis identified eight interconnected themes: Food Waste Reduction, Circular Economy, Sustainability Strategies, Waste Management Practices, Biosecurity Compliance, Regulatory Constraints, Stakeholder Collaboration, and Resource Efficiency. The findings indicate that all five airlines have integrated food waste reduction into their sustainability and operational strategies through initiatives such as meal forecasting, waste monitoring, inventory optimisation, resource efficiency, sustainable packaging, and the use of digital technologies. However, the study also found that New Zealand's strict biosecurity regulations governing international catering waste significantly constrain opportunities for recycling, composting, food redistribution, and the broader implementation of the Circular Economy. The study concludes that sustainable airline food waste management requires balancing environmental sustainability with national biosecurity responsibilities. While airlines demonstrate a strong commitment to improving sustainability, implementing Circular Economy principles successfully depends not only on organisational initiatives but also on stakeholder collaboration, technological innovation, and supportive regulatory frameworks. This dissertation adds to the growing body of knowledge on sustainable aviation by providing practical and theoretical insights into managing in-flight food waste within a highly regulated biosecurity environment.
Access status: Open Access ,
Textile Expressions: A Practice-Led Approach to Cultural Preservation and Embodied Making with E-Textiles
(Auckland University of Technology, 2026) Wang, Yuxi; Joseph, Frances; Cleveland, Donna
Heritage arts and crafts play a crucial role in shaping national identity, serving as living expressions of cultural legacy and historical continuity. These practices offer powerful visual and material representations that preserve and communicate the distinct artistic traditions of communities and regions. However, many of these crafts are now at serious risk of extinction due to shifting cultural priorities and industrialisation. This practice-led doctoral research explores how traditional Chinese craft practices, particularly embroidery techniques such as tin embroidery, weave stitching, and seed stitching, can be reimagined through the integration of emerging technologies such as e-textiles. By merging the tactile, handcrafted nature of heritage textiles with interactive and conductive materials, the study investigated how traditional techniques can be revitalised while retaining their cultural and aesthetic significance. At the core of this research was the belief that craft is not only a means of making but also a method of storytelling and cultural transmission. The research was grounded in experimentation, combining heritage techniques with contemporary materials through a practice-led process that foregrounded embodied, tactile engagement in making. Rather than relying on automated or digital fabrication, the research drew on deep material knowledge, iterative prototyping, and reflective fieldwork. Methods such as replication, unlearning, and cultural immersion supported a sustained investigation into how traditional craft forms might be preserved, adapted, and transformed through contemporary practice. The researcher’s personal perspective and identity as a maker were central to the process, framing craft as both a personal and cultural act of communication. This doctoral project combines practical outcomes with a written thesis, offering a comprehensive exploration of the research process and creative development. The thesis not only details the learning journey of this project but also reflects on key insights and presents one of its key contributions: the creation and design of the digital prototype book. This outcome documents and shares the experimental and creative journey, featuring a curated mini collection of textile prototypes through step-by-step guides, material narratives, and visual documentation. The digital book functions as a visual and narrative companion to the thesis; more than an instructional manual, it serves as a living archive and a potential platform for creative education, cultural engagement, and knowledge sharing. Designed to support renewed interest in heritage techniques, the book invites others, especially emerging makers and educators, to connect with, reinterpret, and extend traditional crafts into contemporary and future contexts. Together, these components articulate how traditional craftsmanship can evolve within a contemporary design context, contributing to broader dialogues around craft, technology, methodology and sustainable creative practice.
Access status: Open Access ,
Accounting for Global Carbon Dioxide Production From Human Metabolism Between 1985 and 2015: A Modelling Study
(Elsevier, 2026-10-26) Gonzalez, JT; Lolli, L; Spellanzon, B; Atkinson, G; Maunder, Ed; Moreno-Cabañas, A; Buniam, J; Thompson, D; Betts, J; Ainslie, PN; Alemán-Mateo, H; Bandini, L; Blaak, EE; Bouten, CVC; Bovet, P; Brage, S; Casper, R; Dabare, P; Fudge, BW; Gillingham, M; Goris, AH; Gurven, M; Haisma, H; Hoos, MB; Joonas, N; Katzmarzyk, P; Kimura, M; Das, SK; Lanerolle, P; Larsson, CL; Löf, M; Must, A; Neuhouser, M; Nicklas, TA; Ojiambo, RM; Pietilainen, KH; Racette, SB; Ravussin, E; Redman, LM; Reilly, JJ; Roberts, S; Sardinha, LB; Silva, AM; Sinha, S; Sjödin, AM; Stice, E; Urlacher, SS; Van Mil, EA; Verbunt, JA; Wells, JCK; Yoshida, T; Zhang, X; Murphy-Alford, A; Loechl, CU; Luke, A; Ravelli, MN; Pontzer, H; Rood, J; Sagayama, H; Schoeller, DA; Westerterp, KR; Wong, WW; Yamada, Y; Speakman, J
Background: Human activity is a dominant driver of global carbon emissions, yet one universal source–human metabolism–has never been quantified using free-living measurements of carbon dioxide (CO₂) production at scale. We aimed to describe the contribution of human metabolism to global CO₂ emissions between 1985 and 2015. Methods: In this modelling study, we used the largest available database of doubly labelled water (DLW) measurements from 1986 to 2019. The other data sources comprised WHO Global Health Observatory, United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, and Non-communicable Disease Risk Factor Collaboration. We first allometrically modelled human CO₂ production (kg per year) using measurements available for 4479 female and 2277 male participants from the International Atomic Energy Agency DLW database to derive predicted estimates of human CO₂ production adjusted for differences in body mass and sex. Second, by combining predicted estimates based on allometric scaling of CO₂ production for body mass with available population demographic information, generalised additive models were used to describe the 30-year progression of human body mass and per capita and global CO₂ production. We used the time-series country-specific measurements from 1985 to 2015 with population-level global human metabolic CO₂ production summarised as cumulative sum for the progression analyses. Findings: Data were collected between 1986 and 2019. Mean ± SD (range) participant age was 40 ± 26 (0 to 101) and body mass was 63.3 ± 27.8 (2.4 to 101.9). 9006 measurements from 6756 participants (4479 women and 2277 men) from the DLW database were used to derive estimates of human CO₂ production adjusted for differences in body mass and sex.We observed that human metabolic CO₂ production approximately doubled over a 30-year period, from 1·18 Gt per year to 2·05 Gt per year. This increase was driven mostly by population growth (>60%) with a minor contribution from increases in body mass. Per capita sex differences equalised at the population level, and continental differences reflect population shifts rather than physiological differences, with Asia accounting for the majority of human metabolic CO₂ production among all continents. Interpretation: Our findings suggest that human metabolism is a quantitatively important component of the fast carbon cycle and should be accounted for in carbon system modelling to enhance precision and fidelity. With a projected peak global population in the mid-to-late 21st century, metabolic CO₂ production will increasingly contribute to global carbon fluxes. Funding: The the DLW database was funded by The International Atomic Energy Agency, Taiyo Nippon Sanso, and SERCON.