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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Recent Submissions

Access status: Open Access ,
Protocol: Vocational Rehabilitation in Generalist Community-Based Rehabilitation: A Scoping Review of Existing Supports for Practitioners
(AUT Person-Centred Rehabilitation Research Centre, 2026-10-07) Fadyl, Joanna; Idenyi, Chisom Cassandra
Objective: This scoping review will map supports, tools, training, strategies, and organisational arrangements that are documented in academic and grey literature to enable generalist community-based rehabilitation practitioners to initiate or deliver vocational rehabilitation (VR) for adults with functional limitations from injury or adult-acquired conditions. It will also describe the nature and content of each support. Introduction: Work participation is an important rehabilitation outcome, yet vocational rehabilitation is not consistently embedded within generalist community-based rehabilitation services. Practitioners often report challenges related to knowledge, confidence, resources, and organisational support for addressing a patient’s VR needs or work-related issues. Mapping the supports available to practitioners is therefore an important step toward understanding how vocational rehabilitation can be better integrated into routine rehabilitation practice. It is also needed before intervention development or an effectiveness-focused review. Inclusion criteria: Population: generalist community-based rehabilitation practitioners serving adults who have functional limitations from injury or adult-acquired conditions. Concept: supports that enable them to address work participation or VR. Context: community, outpatient, transitional, primary-care, or mixed rehabilitation settings. Empirical studies of any design and relevant grey literature will be eligible. Type of Sources: Empirical studies (any design) and grey literature sources will be included. Sources focused solely on settings or practitioners considered to be specialist VR (not generalist rehabilitation) or focused only on client-level outcomes without practitioner enablement will be excluded. Methods: The review will follow JBI methodology for scoping reviews and will be reported according to PRISMA-ScR. A three-step search will cover MEDLINE, Embase, CINAHL, PsycINFO, Scopus, Web of Science Core Collection, and targeted grey-literature sources. Two reviewers will independently screen titles/abstracts and full texts following a pilot screening exercise to ensure consistent application of the eligibility criteria. Data will be charted in a piloted form, mapped descriptively, and summarised using directed descriptive content analysis. No critical appraisal is planned because the objective is to map rather than estimate effectiveness.
Access status: Open Access ,
A Hybrid 1D-3D Fractional Transport and Non-Fourier Bioheat Model for Hyperthermia Enhanced Drug Delivery in Cerebral Microcirculation
(Elsevier, 2026-09-02) Tiwari, Parul; Wiwatanapataphee, B
Fractional-order models provide a powerful framework for capturing anomalous transport, memory, and nonlocal interactions in biological microvascular networks. This study presents a hybrid 1D-3D model of cerebral drug transport under mild hyperthermia, coupling fractional intravascular dynamics with non-Fourier tissue bioheat. The vascular network is represented as a directed 1D graph, where advection, diffusion, and reactive exchange obey Caputo-Fabrizio time-fractional and Riesz space-fractional laws, linked through Robin-type mass and heat transfer to surrounding 3D tissue governed by a Cattaneo-Vernotte bioheat equation. Thermal feedback modifies permeability and perfusion, yielding a two-way thermo-chemical coupling. The explicit fractional scheme employs exponential-memory updates for Caputo-Fabrizio derivatives and symmetric Grönwald-Letnikov sums for nonlocal spatial fluxes while preserving global conservation. Simulations on an arteriole-capillary-venule network show that increasing fractional order α sharpens pulse dispersion and delays washout; higher temperature enhances vascular-tissue exchange and accelerates equilibration; and dual-phase-lag relaxation mitigates nonphysical heat spikes near vessel walls. The framework unifies anomalous vascular transport, temperature-sensitive physiology, and network geometry into a scalable model suitable for hyperthermia-optimized brain drug delivery and parameter calibration from imaging data.
Access status: Open Access ,
From Compliant to Critical: Forecasting Emerging E. coli Risk in New Zealand’s South Island Rivers
(MDPI AG, 2026-09-12) Tiwari, Parul; Goyal, Tanishqa; Kulasiri, Don
Freshwater quality is degrading globally, and regulatory monitoring remains largely retrospective, identifying non-compliance only after it occurs. This study identifies whether multi-year, regulatorily relevant compliance breaches can be forecast from sparse monthly monitoring records alone and whether such forecasts improve on the assumption that next year resembles the current one. Using approximately two decades (2004–2024) of Land, Air, Water Aotearoa (LAWA) data from 497 South Island, New Zealand river sites, a single pooled gradient-boosted (LightGBM) classifier was trained to forecast Escherichia coli worst-band (Band E) non-compliance under the National Policy Statement for Freshwater Management at one-, two-, and three-year horizons, benchmarked against persistence, trend projection, and majority-class baselines under strictly temporal validation. The model discriminated breaches reliably (AUC 0.84–0.85) and exceeded persistence in balanced accuracy at all three horizons, significantly at two and three years. Its principal value was early warning: among currently compliant sites, it recovered roughly half of subsequent breaches, transitions that persistence cannot detect by construction, yielding a forward watchlist of 97 sites at risk of entering the worst band (Band E) by 2027, concentrated in pastoral catchments. Forecasting from monitoring data alone imposes an honest ceiling; scores are reported as risk rankings. The findings support a shift from reactive to anticipatory freshwater management.
Access status: Open Access ,
Insights Into the Pulsar Timing Array Hypothesis Space
(American Physical Society (APS), 2026-09-28) Zahraoui, El Mehdi; Maturana-Russel, Patricio; Van Straten, Willem; Meyer, Renate; Gulyaev, Sergei
We present novel insights into the pulsar-noise model space in pulsar timing array (PTA) experiments. Through a comparative analysis of the same Parkes PTA second data release observations processed with the 2020 and 2023 pipelines, we show that data processing materially changes the distribution of posterior support across competing noise hypotheses and increases sensitivity to weak contributions such as the solar wind. A solar-wind component appears in the highest-posterior hypothesis for ten pulsars under the 2023 pipeline, against four under the 2020 pipeline, while the corresponding mean electron density estimates are consistent with Parkes PTA DR3 results. Furthermore, hypothesis-space analysis exposes model competition and degeneracies that are hidden by single-model summaries. Approximately 75% of the pulsars retain substantial posterior support for alternative noise descriptions. Therefore, understanding the nature of the pulsar-noise hypothesis space is crucial for robust inference and nanohertz gravitational-wave background searches.
Access status: Open Access ,
Multi-Level Inclusion Systems: How Tempered Radicals Influence Change in Manufacturing Organisations
(Taylor and Francis Group, 2026-10-05) Griffiths, Chris; McGhee, Peter; Smollan, Roy
This study explores how tempered radicals promote inclusive workplaces across organizational levels in manufacturing companies. Tempered radicals work within established structures to deliver socially inspired change, strategically challenging norms while balancing organizational commitment and personal values. Building on Meyerson’sfoundational work, this research extends tempered radical theory by developing a Multi-Level Tempered Radical Approach Framework that examines how these change agents operate differently across frontline, supervisory, and managerial levels. Within manufacturing settings, 27 participants were interviewed through narrative inquiry methodology. We employed Leximancer text mining and thematic analysis. The findings reveal distinct patterns in how tempered radicals construct identities, navigate work environments, employ operational methods, and engage in interpersonal interactions at each organizational level. The framework developed for this study contributes to tempered radical literature by providing empirical evidence of level-specific strategies within hierarchical manufacturing contexts—an underexplored setting in existing research. The study advances understanding of Meyerson’s spectrum while offering insights for enhancing workplace inclusion in traditionally hierarchical industries.