Watch the video on YouTube.

More than 1300 students will graduate at five ceremonies, followed by parades to The Square.

Watch the YouTube video.

Professor Olaf Diegel

Massey University mechatronics professor Olaf Diegel made his dream come true when he created a series of colourful 3D-printed electric guitars with latticed bodies adorned with spiders and butterflies.  

And when he posted images of the prototypes, explaining their origins before launching an online business, musicians and design buffs worldwide were dazzled by the aesthetics and a deluge of inquiries ensued.

Now, punters can hear the decorative, brightly coloured instruments, with a demo by Massey jazz guitar tutor and freelance rock guitarist Neil Watson, of the New Zealand School of Music. Mr Watson is based at the University’s Albany campus where Professor Diegel is a lecturer and researcher.  

The clip is evidence that the custom-made instrument, which began as an experimental project, is not just a pretty gimmick. Not only does it sound as good as its mainstream counterparts, it symbolises a revolutionary era in manufacturing, says Professor Diegel.

Also known as additive manufacturing, 3D printing is the process of making three-dimensional solid objects from a digital file using a printer that deposits layers of plastic or metal powder, with each layer fused by a precision laser beam.

The process, used for high-end customised products or medical parts such as artificial hips, hearing aids and dental fittings, as well as niche designer items, is the future for manufacturing specific types of goods, says Professor Diegel, who is based at the School of Engineering and Advanced Technology.

“The whole purpose is customisation and trying to avoid waste,” he says. “It’s the next big thing in manufacturing, because you can create to order and modify the design to suit specific individual requirements, whether it’s for a new set of teeth, a door handle or a piece of jewellery.”

And in a decade or so, he predicts many households will have 3D printers for replacing or updating personal and household items, reducing the need for mass production that can lead to stockpiles, over-supply and, ultimately, waste. “It’s the next industrial revolution and it’s going to completely change the way we do things,” says Professor Diegel.

“New Zealand, a country largely made up of small companies making high-value products, can benefit enormously from these technologies, as they will be able to go to market with products without the current prohibitive tooling costs that often prevent them from getting their ideas off the ground”.

So far he has printed several small guitar bodies – such as the shocking pink ‘rock chick’ model – in New Zealand, and two larger ones in the United States because of the size of the machine needed. His school has several desktop 3D printers, which students use for small-scale engineering prototype projects, and he hopes a larger-scale machine will be on campus later this year.

Once the guitar bodies are printed they are manually fitted with inner wooden cores, which can be made of different types of wood, such as mahogany or maple, to adjust the guitar’s tone. The necks are made of maple or mahogany, with traditional tuning keys and strings added. The guitars will be sold via his ODD online site (www.odd.org.nz), and can be adapted to suit design tastes, colour and quirks of the buyer.

“If someone wants geckos, or flowers, or parts that can move, it will eventually all be possible through the online design software we are working on.”

But even if the guitars are a smash hit, he doubts even the most hard-core rocker will want to smash one as a performance antic.

Caption: Professor Olaf Diegel with one of his 3D printed guitars.

FORTY THREE THOUSAND FEET (TRAILER) from Matthew Harris on Vimeo.

Film scriptwriter and doctoral graduate Matthew Harris

The poster for Matt Harris’ first short film 43,000 Feet

A short film about a statistician who gets sucked out of a plane will premiere at a prestigious New York festival next week as its writer crosses the stage to receive his PhD at Massey University’s Albany graduation ceremony.

The nine-minute film, entitled 43,000 Feet will premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York.

Matthew Harris, who will receive his PhD in English on Thursday, says the setting of his film provides a dramatic context for its protagonist (played by Dylan Pharazyn) to ruminate on the meanings and measures of time as he is about to run out of it.

“The idea for the framing story came from hearing about the miraculous survival of a New York window washer called Alcides Moreno, who fell from an apartment building, 47 storeys into an alleyway,” Mr Harris says. “But the falling scenario really acts a vehicle for the protagonist to ramble about how he thinks there's no such thing as the present or the future - they're empty concepts”.

His film (directed by Campbell Hooper and produced by Heather Lee and Amber Easby) is one of two New Zealand short films selected from more than 2800 submissions from 25 countries, and will be screened as well as part of the festival competition. The other is Whakatiki, written by Bernadette Murphy.

43.000 Feet is a mix of live action and animation, with interior monologue voiced by Peter Bryant to convey the thoughts of statistician John Wilkins as he falls to Earth. He calculates he has exactly three minutes and 48 seconds before impact, formulating a plan for hitting the ground and rehearsing what he will say to media on the off-chance he survives.

The film – Mr Harris’ first – received a grant of $90,000 from the New Zealand Film Commission towards its final budget and took a year to make. It will screen in New Zealand later this year.

“The live action parts were filmed in and around Auckland central, and we had to use a training fuselage for the interior aircraft shots - obviously major airlines aren't keen on giving their planes a starring role in a film which features an air disaster,” he says.

Mr Harris teaches and tutors in the School of English and Media Studies at the University’s Albany campus, where he was nominated for Lecturer of the Year in 2010. His writing has been published widely, from academic articles in Landfall to creative writing in Poetry New Zealand, Trout, Southern Ocean Review, Kokako, and many others.  His second short film, Snooze:Time, has just gone into production and stars iconic British-Kiwi actress Lisa Harrow.

“It's about the different kinds of time we experience: from the agonisingly slow (morning-after-time, microwave-time) to the truly chaotic (such as the contradictory-time of old age, when the days seem to crawl by but Christmas comes around faster each year).”

The Tribeca Film Festival was established in 2003 by a group of New York filmmakers, including Robert De Niro, in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 terror attacks on the World Trade Centre. Its purpose was to address the loss of vitality in the TriBeCa neighbourhood in Lower Manhattan. The festival programme includes a line-up of independent films, from documentaries to short films, and draws an estimated three million people. Works entered in the short film category are eligible for cash and value-in-kind prizes totalling more than$10,000 and the winner of the Best Narrative Short award will qualify for consideration in the Academy Awards’ short film category.

Mr Harris says he is really pleased his film is debuting on America’s East Coast. “It's definitely the kind of film that will appeal more to the slightly neurotic New York temperament than the bling and bluster of the West Coast. It's a great fit."

Find out more about Matthew Harris: www.matthewjamesharris.com/ 

Watch the video on YouTube.

Idan Shapira with a lure rat cage used to attract
and trap wild rats in conservation areas.

Rats, the scourge of New Zealand’s conservation estate, are being lured and trapped by their own species in a novel approach to pest eradication developed by a Massey University biology researcher.

Idan Shapira, based at the Institute of Natural Sciences at Albany, says his experiments have tested the use of live caged lab rats in successfully attracting wild Norway rats (Rattus norvegicus) – the same species – when food bait fails to do the job.

The poison-free technique relies on the irresistible power of same-species attraction, with its promise of sex or social interaction, rather than food as a lure. Both the Department of Conservation and Auckland Council have already shown interest in using this method on protected conservation islands and reserves, as well as the Auckland Zoo.

Mr Shapira has been trialling the method for the past three years for his doctoral study on the role of olfactory attraction in invasive rodents as a tool for conservation. He says the method is particularly suited to conservation areas, such as islands, where re-invasion occurs following pest eradication through the use of poison. In these scenarios, one rat can cause significant devastation to vulnerable native birds and insects, and prove difficult to catch with traditional food bait because of the abundance of food available to them in the habitat.

“A single rat can cause a lot of damage. If it's a pregnant female it’s going to be even more of a concern,” he says. “This is a practical tool for conservation management in situations where you have a few rats to get rid of in protected wilderness areas,” he says.

Live lure rats have to be humanely cared for and fed, so it was not feasible to have a lot of them. They are held in a cage with two compartments; one for the lure rat and a separate area to trap the wild rat.

In his field experiments at Shakespear Regional Park north of Auckland, Matuku Reserve in the Waitakere Ranges in West Auckland, and on private land, Mr Shapiro caught a total of eight rats using food bait and more than 50 using lure rats.

In one trial he used infra-red cameras to capture the nocturnal activity around the cage. It shows three large rats keenly checking out the cage with the lure rat.

Auckland Zoo pest control coordinator Craig Knapp says the method has been a great success at the zoo, where rats were rejecting conventional baited traps because they find other food in the zoo. During a trial at the zoo, 11 rats were trapped using the lure rat. “That’s 11 rats we wouldn’t have caught using traditional traps,” he says. Rats can be a threat to smaller animals and birds at the zoo where poison is not advisable because of the risk of a poisoned rat being eaten by a zoo animal, he says.

Mr Shapira, who is part of Massey’s Ecology and Conservation Group, is in discussions with Hamilton Zoo about using the method there.

He says lure rats could potentially be used to detect and trap other small invasive mammals, such as stoats.

New Zealand has no native rats, but Norway rats (also known as brown or water rats) were on the ships of the first explorers who arrived here in the late 1700s. Ship rats (known as black or roof rats) came later on European ships. Between them, the two invasive species have eliminated several species of native birds and insects, and had a devastating effect on numerous others.

Massey University Chancellor Dr Russell Ballard, Hon Steven Joyce, Albany Students’ Association president Stephan van Heerden, MC Banu Pashutanizadeh and Vice-Chancellor Steve Maharey.

Student Central – officially opened at Massey University Albany today – provides a heart for the campus and vital place to “hang out,” according to guest speaker the Hon Steven Joyce.

As Minister for Tertiary Education, Skills and Employment, Mr Joyce told the gathering of staff, students, alumni and the campus founder Sir Neil Waters that the world is entering a skills race for tertiary-trained young people, and he anticipates an increase in the number of enrolments at New Zealand universities in the future.

“It’s a fantastic day today to see this facility in place. It’s going to help with what I call the pastoral care of students which I think is very important if you are going to have good results. And it’s part of the growing story that is the Massey University Albany campus.

“The new facility here will be the heart of the campus, because actually students need more than to learn. Students need space outside the lecture theatres where they can meet their friends, access services, have space to study, and as we used to say in the eighties, ‘just hang out’.

“Excellent facilities can have a strong impact on student achievement,” he said, as students need places for “relating and discussing with others as part of learning”.

“Tertiary education is an important part in growing New Zealand’s economy. The students we are training today will go to drive the future of New Zealand, not just economically, but socially and culturally.”

He said the population of the North Shore was expected to increase by 30,000 to 40,000 over next 10 years, and its people were well-served by range of programmes at Albany.

He alluded to his connections to the campus, graduating on the North Shore in 2001, although he completed his undergraduate degree in zoology at Massey’s Manawatu campus in 1983. He also has a home in Albany when not residing in Wellington.

Vice-Chancellor Steve Maharey paid tribute to Sir Neil Waters for his vision of building a campus at Albany when there was just a lone house in the area. He also congratulated the Albany Students’ Association for working in partnership with the University to build the $15m centre and “for being willing to put their money where their aspirations are”.

“What a remarkable effort. This project has gone from woe to go in a very short period of time, and it is under budget.”

Engineering student Banu Pashutanizadeh, who was MC as president of the Academic Toastmasters Club at Massey, said the building “is very special to us, because it's a dedicated place for us to gather, here at the heart of Massey University Albany”.

Professor Sir Mason Durie explained the meaning the seven pou (Mäori carved steel poles), which form a circle in the outdoor plaza area of the centre, to represent the path taken by students on their learning journey.

The pou give the area a distinctive Mäori presence, in recognition of the University’s close relationship with tangata whenua. They were designed by Whakatane artist Arekatera (Katz) Maihi to symbolise the University’s Mäori learning philosophy, Te Kunenga ki Pürehuroa (From Inception to Infinity) – a principle relevant to all students. Each pou represents a stepping stone through the journey of learning, from the first seed of thought to ultimate academic achievement.

The opening of the centre means students can now find coffee, food, a comfortable place to meet and make friends, talk to student union representatives, get a health check, see a counsellor, and take advantage of travel and retail facilities under one roof.
 
The building’s striking contemporary architecture (Warren and Mahoney) is designed to complement the campus’s iconic Opus Architecture-designed Mediterranean hilltop concept.

To reflect the University’s sustainability goals, Student Central has innovative features such as mechanically operated louvre windows that open and close in response to temperature, humidity, wind and rain sensors to keep the building at a comfortable temperature for as long as possible before air conditioning needs to be turned on. Occupancy movement sensors have been fitted throughout for increased energy efficiency, and daytime artificial lighting is reduced thanks to design features allowing in more natural light.

Outdoors, the graciously composed plaza area – constructed of 9,500 terrazzo pavers and adorned with 2,733 plants – has numerous places to sit and enjoy sunshine and fresh air, and ample space for student events.

Ms Pashutanizadeh said the building truly belongs to the current 7000 students enrolled at Albany campus, and to all students – past and future – whose contribution towards funding, through a special levy, has helped to make this keenly anticipated project a reality.

Dr Murray Cox. Listen to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation interview.

New research from a Massey University computational biologist has found 30 Indonesian women first settled the island of Madagascar.

The finding sheds light on one of the strangest evolutionary events in human history. The people of Madagascar, off the east coast of Africa, are descended from Indonesians, quarter of a world away. How this happened has never been fully explained.

Dr Murray Cox, of the Institute of Molecular Biosciences, led a team that screened the DNA of Madagascans and Indonesians to reconstruct the island’s early history.

“It has been known for a very long time that there is a really clear Asian signature in the DNA of Madagascans,” Dr Cox says. “What we’ve done is developed a computer model to find out more about that very early settlement history. Our research suggests that around 30 Indonesian women came to the island about 1200 years ago, around the 9th century AD.”

Almost all Madagascans today are related to those 30 founding women. “There has been trading along the Indian Ocean for millennia, and people have assumed that Indonesians settled there as a result of lots of people using this trading route,” he says. “But if it is only 30 individuals, that theory doesn’t make sense. So it appears more likely that this may have been an accidental event – it certainly wasn’t a big, planned movement of people.”

To conduct the research, Dr Cox and his team took DNA from 300 Madagascans and almost 3000 Indonesians and used the specially developed computer model to simulate evolution under various parameters. A year and a half of computer time was needed to run the simulations.

Dr Cox says simulations are needed to discover the details of the settlement. “Just looking at the DNA itself will tell you some things, like the fact there is an Asian connection,” he says. “But what it won’t tell you is how many people came and when that happened and what the population size is today. To get that you have to run simulations to figure out what has happened in the past.

“We simulated under a whole range of different demographic models and found one that matched the actual outcome. That gives us a measurement of what the most likely settlement model is.”

Dr Cox worked with a team that included researchers from the Eijkman Institute in Indonesia, the University of Arizona and the University of Toulouse. The research was published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B and was funded by the Royal Society of New Zealand through a Rutherford Fellowship.

College of Business Pro Vice-Chancellor Professor Ted Zorn, Finance Minister Bill English, Acting Chair of NZCPFE Suzie Marsden, Chair of Workplace Savings David Ireland and Retirement Commissioner Diana Crossan at the launch of the Retirement Expenditure Survey.

Board members Professor Ted Zorn, Suzie Marsden, Jeff Stangl, Sue Foley,
Dr Claire Matthews, Roy Thompson and Diana Crossan at the launch of
the Retirement Expenditure Survey.

 

Watch the Money Talks interview with Genevieve Westcott.

Professor Hamish Gow.

An open source Food Safety Knowledge Network devised by a Massey University Professor has won a major international award for improving food safety practices in developing countries.

Professor of Agribusiness Hamish Gow oversaw the development of the network that has been recognised with the international effective practice award by the Sloan Consortium.

He worked with a team at Michigan State University on the project that provides Third World food producers free and open access to best practice food safety guidelines.

“The project got started when I was director of Partnerships for Food Industry Development,” he says. “We needed a more effective and scalable model for reaching small and medium enterprises and farmers in developing countries with extension and capacity building.”

The network provides a set of steps that any producer can access that will take them from no food safety capacity to meeting international standards, Professor Gow says.

“We approached the Global Food Safety Initiative, a group comprising some of the biggest food producers in the world, and put together some technical working groups to create the competency requirements,” he says. “This involved four or five companies putting their food safety training manuals on the table. We built a set of training materials that are now available online and through regional and international consultants.”

The network appears to have had pleasing results, with anecdotal evidence showing there has been a big impact on food safety in some countries. “In Ukraine, I’m told, they have gone from 20 per cent compliance to 90 per cent,” he says.

Professor Gow says it is a model that is perfectly suited for knowledge transfer in the New Zealand agricultural sector. “This is a different type of model for engagement. It could help solve the extension problem with disseminating the latest research and best practices to farmers in an easily accessible manner out of Massey and other research organisations. It’s an advanced way of writing a textbook that has a lot more impact.”

Professor Gow’s work fits well with other projects at the University including the World Bank project that has seen public health and veterinary professionals taught master’s programmes through distance programmes devised and offered by Massey staff. The University has also begun offering short courses to Agribusiness managers in a joint initiative with Lincoln University.

The Sloan Consortium is an institutional and professional leadership organisation dedicated to integrating online education into the mainstream of higher education.

Watch the video on YouTube (filmed by earth-touch.com: http://Earth-Touch.com) showing diving gannets diving underwater.

Gannets plunge diving for fish in the Hauraki Gulf; gannets colliding
underwater; and Gabriel Machovsky Capuska at the Cape Kidnapper’s
gannet colony. (photo credits: Fabio Piccinato and Eric Libby).

Gannets may be among the fastest and most agile seabird hunters around, but they risk dying of fatal neck and head injuries from accidental collisions in the water when diving for fish at breakneck speeds, a Massey biology researcher has found.

Gabriel Machovsky Capuska has been studying the foraging and feeding behaviour of the Australasian gannet Morus serrator, the distinctively sleek, yellow-throated seabird with blue-rimmed eyes found in 29 colonies around New Zealand’s coast.

He says the underwater collisions captured on video highlights the risks of plunge diving that is otherwise a successful strategy for gannets to catch small fish and squid. Fatal collisions occur during high-density feeding, when two gannets target the same fish and one pierces the neck or head of the other.

Video footage also captured evidence of kleptoparasitism (literally, parasitism by theft) in which a diving gannet targets a previously caught fish in the beak of another gannet underwater.

Post-mortems of two of 50 carcasses collected from Hauraki Gulf waters showed the gannets had died from collision injuries. While this ratio suggests the phenomenon to be relatively rare, analyses of underwater video footage of Cape gannets in South Africa shows accidental collisions between gannets are not so uncommon, he says.

Mr Machovsky Capuska, an Argentinean scientist based in New Zealand, began studying gannets three years ago for his doctoral thesis under the supervision of Professor David Raubenheimer at Massey’s Institute of Natural Sciences at Albany.

As part of his study he has examined the remarkable plunge-diving technique used by gannets that enables them to hunt between air and the water. He has studied gannet colonies at Gannet Rock in the Hauraki Gulf, Cape Kidnappers on the East Coast and Farewell Spit in the South Island, tagging birds with tiny GPS (global positioning system) devices to track their long-range foraging and diving behaviour.

The gannet (Mäori name takapu) is familiar to many New Zealanders, while colonies at Muriwai on Auckland’s West Coast and Cape Kidnappers on the East Coast near Napier are popular tourist destinations. But the scientist suspects few people are aware of gannets’ amazing physiological capabilities needed to survive.

Take your average gannet at Cape Kidnappers, where 10,000 of New Zealand’s 55,000 breeding pairs dwell. In order to eat, they sometimes fly up to 500km at an average 70km per hour in a day to seek out shoals of small pilchards and anchovies. They must then compete with other foraging seabirds as well as dolphins, whales and sharks as they plunge dive repeatedly from 15m above the air to hit the water in less than a second, diving to about 20m and spending up to 42 seconds underwater pursuing prey.

Equipped with extraordinary vision, they can adapt their optical capability in a split second from air to water while effectively blocking out ultraviolet light reflection that distorts the position of darting prey. Mr Machovsky Capuska studied this aspect of the gannet’s biology in collaboration with Israeli Professor Gadi Katzir, a world expert in bird visual ecology invited through the University’s international visitor’s funding, and Professor Raubenheimer.

He says his study, due to be completed later this year, provides new insights into the foraging behaviour of gannets, which as a species are valuable indicators of changes to the marine environment. Better understanding of the anatomy and physiology of gannet necks could also have implications for understanding the dynamics of neck injuries in humans who dive, he says.

Mr Machovsky Capuska is due to appear on a new TV3 wildlife programme in May, as well as TV One’s Coasters series in late May, talking about his research on gannets. The study was funded by a Massey University Research Fund and a scholarship from the Institute of Natural Sciences

First year students participate in team building exercises during Let’s Get Going at the Manawatu campus.

Students are welcomed to the new Student Central
at the Albany campus.

Creative Arts students and staff in the Museum Building’s
Great Hall at the Wellington campus.

Watch a video of the CoCA introduction.

The first semester is now in full swing at Massey with students back on all three University campuses.

Students returned to the Manawatu campus last Wednesday as the Let’s Get Going programme kicked off the academic year.

The programme offers first-years guidance to ease their transition to university life. It includes campus tours, information on support services, academic support, recreation and health.

Along with introductory seminars from each of the University’s academic colleges last week, students also got to have some fun at a comedy gala featuring Ben Hurley, Jeremy Elwood and Nick Rado.

More than 1250 students and family members attended the Welcome Ceremony at Arena 2 in Palmerston North, where first-year students were welcomed to the University by Vice-Chancellor Steve Maharey and University Registrar Stuart Morriss.

Meanwhile, in Albany, about 500 new students and their families and friends were welcomed at the outdoor plaza of the stunning new Student Central building.

The crowd, including academic and general staff, as well as student Uni-guides, gathered in the late afternoon sunshine for an informal welcome, beginning in Mäori by campus kaiwhakaruruhau (regional adviser Mäori) Donald Ripia and the campus waiata group, followed by speeches from Assistant Vice-Chancellor and University Registrar Stuart Morriss, and Student Life manager Paul Fenton.

The new students then attended college presentations indoors, and campus tours with Uni-guides.

The $15 million first stage of the building, dubbed Student Central and designed by architects at Warren and Mahoney, will provide a campus heart and hub for students. It has a food hall, café and retail outlets as well as offices for the Albany Students’ Association, student services such as health and counselling, as well as space for student clubs.

Further south, it was standing room only at the powhiri for first-year students at the University’s historic Museum Building in Wellington. That evening, Campus Registrar Deanna Riach and Massey At Wellington Students’ Association president Ben Thorpe teamed up to serve dinner to the new students and their parents at Tussock Café in the Student Centre. This year’s intake includes international students from more than 20 countries.

On Thursday, individual colleges welcomed their students. Many of Massey’s Wellington offerings continue to prove popular and Pro Vice-Chancellor Creative Arts Claire Robinson says applications for 2012 almost met the record level of 2011 despite declining school leaver numbers.

On Friday, Wellington students attended “101” workshops on Massey, studying at university, critical thinking and problem solving, all designed to get their university experience off to a great start.

This week in the capital, Orientation is happening at some of Wellington’s off-campus venues, and there’s a special recognition lunch for those new students who won Massey scholarships.

Massey University Vice-Chancellor Steve Maharey.

Watch on YouTube: Ceremony 1 – Ceremony 2 (view instructions below on creating custom links that open as you cross the stage)

Guest speaker Simon Barnett

Chris Murray from Outpost Digital Media mixing the
vision for the live streaming of graduation.

Some 450 Massey graduates paraded across the stage today in Palmerston North - and across the globe, as the ceremonies were beamed live around the world.

For the first time at a New Zealand university, the two ceremonies were broadcast live via the University's website and via permanent videos on YouTube, so family and friends of the graduands could celebrate the success of their loved ones from anywhere in the world. The live streaming used the MediaSite live broadcast system, developed by the University's Information Technology Services and more usually used to capture and broadcast academic lectures on campus.

Those being capped came from all three campuses – Albany, Manawatu and Wellington – and include many international students.

"Graduation is a time of celebration and many of those attending have travelled considerable distances either to be capped or to support those who do," University Vice-Chancellor Steve Maharey says. "We know how important this is particularly to those who have worked hard to achieved their qualification but also to those who have supported them through that journey. By recording the event and streaming it live on the internet we are enabling everyone to share in the proud moment – and re-live it later.

“Massey University prides itself on being the engine of the new New Zealand, putting this country on the global map for its innovation, creativity, agrifood research and teaching and its connectedness. Enabling friends and family to see their loved ones graduate and to share in the success and achievement is a logical extension of that."

Taking the ceremonies live will use technology usually reserved to beam lectures from the classroom to homes across the country - and the world, as part of its distance learning programme. The ceremonies will also be available on demand on Massey’s YouTube channel soon after the ceremonies, and students will be able to send links to their families that will start the video when they are walking across the stage.

The Vice-Chancellor says the breadth of the qualifications awarded and the variety of the research topics covered by the PhD candidates underpins that global perspective.

Thirty PhDs were awarded – in clinical psychology, education, philosophy and business administration.

The Venerable Te Waaka Melbourne, Anglican Archdeacon of Waiwhakaari, Rotorua, received a Doctorate of Philosophy for his examination of Maori spirituality. Other PhD topics ranged from an investigation into whether consuming a combination of protein and carbohydrates following exercise is beneficial to future performance; the effectiveness of various practices in mitigating methane emissions in livestock; to how satellite tracking of wildlife can help conservation agencies gain a better understanding of animal behaviour.

Amongst the graduates were 15 postgraduate Pasifika students, including two PhD recipients. Winifereti Nainoca investigated how the Fijian way of life impacts on marine conservation, while Alisi Vudiniabola studied why an Australian aid-funded Diploma of Nursing curriculum, introduced to Fiji in 2004, failed. Dr Vudiniabola also made the College of Humanities and Social Sciences Dean’s List – the first Pasifika student to achieve this honour.

Palmerston North entrepreneur Simon Barnett, owner of internationally successful sports gear company Obo, spoke at both ceremonies. His message to graduands was to find something they really wanted to do. “Find something…anything… that  spins your wheels, puts a bounce your step, lights the fire in your gut.

“No matter what you do find something that you can love doing and be forever curious because you can be sure that your first idea of first execution won’t be your best and there are always ways to improve.”

Former Palmerston North Boys' High School pupil Jesse Stratford, who is currently studying at the New Zealand School of Music in Wellington, a joint venture between Massey and Victoria universities, provided musical entertainment.

Watch later

Third year Bachelor of Design students from left, Ben Wright, Kieran Stowers, Chris Nicholls, Joy Roxas and Vincent Lee display the On The Fence online tool.

Watch a video of the hagfish in action.

 Watch the 3NEWS item.

A hagfish showing its teeth.

Te Papa researcher Carl Struthers with a hagfish.

The hagfish found in New Zealand’s deepest waters is grotesque enough, thanks to its scary protruding teeth straight from a horror film.  Now, scientists have witnessed the full power of its other gruesome feature – a built-in slime weapon to deter predators such as sharks, making it one of the planet’s ultimate survivors.

Researchers from Massey University and Te Papa have just released graphic underwater footage showing for the first time how the primitive hagfish – also known as the snot-eel – defends itself by emitting a choking, gill-clogging slime that might be the envy of any surfer under attack from a shark.

The footage, part of a study of New Zealand’s deep-sea animal diversity, is from special cameras that captured images of various fish attacking hagfish off Three Kings and Great Barrier islands as they feed on bait attached to the camera.  As soon as it is attacked, the hagfish releases a gooey mucus-like substance from its battery of slime glands and up to 200 slime pores, causing predators to gag before hastily retreating.

“Our video footage in New Zealand waters has proven that hagfish secrete slime at an incredibly fast speed when under attack by predators such as large sharks or bony fishes,” says Te Papa’s Dr Vincent Zintzen, lead scientist of the project.

A paper on the findings just published online in Scientific Reports (Nature Publishing Group) titled Hagfish predatory behaviour and slime defence mechanism describes the effectiveness of the “copious slime” in choking would-be predators without apparently poisoning or killing them. This in turn allows the hagfish to carry on feeding or to make an escape, clearly a success as an evolutionary strategy.

Other new findings include the discovery that the hagfish is not only an ocean scavenger but is also a predator – with a twist. Footage reveals its bizarre method of burrowing into sand in pursuit of a red bandfish by knotting its tail for additional leverage as it grabs its hidden prey before unknotting and emerging from the sand.

Professor Marti Anderson, a marine biologist and statistician at Massey’s New Zealand Institute for Advanced Study at Albany, co-authored the study. She says the footage provides clear evidence of how the unique slime defence mechanism works and also how hagfish exhibit different adaptive feeding strategies.

“Taken together, the findings help to explain why the hagfish, a very primitive fish, has endured successfully for around 300 million years,” she says. Anatomically modern humans have been around for just 200,000 years by comparison.

“We know so very little about the deep sea. Simply dropping cameras into the water at a range of depths in a systematic design not only gives us good quantitative data to model diversity and behaviour, it also has a high probability of finding something new,” Professor Anderson says. “Using underwater video cameras, we can actually see fish in their own environment, which is far more informative than what can be learned from the often bedraggled specimens brought to the surface in research trawls.”

Dr Clive Roberts, co-author and curator of fishes at Te Papa, says the ecological role of the hagfish may be far more diverse than previously considered. “Hagfish, which are quite abundant in the deep sea, were previously observed feeding on carcasses of dead whales, fishes and invertebrates. Our video footage now clearly shows that hagfish are also hunters able to prey on live fishes.”

Since 2009, the scientists have deployed cameras at depths ranging from 50 to 1500 metres around New Zealand. So far, more than 1000 hours of footage has been collected off the Kermadec Islands, Three Kings Islands, Great Barrier Island, White Island and Kaikoura, with surveys to extend in 2012 to the sea off the Otago Peninsula and down as far as the Auckland Islands.

This research was funded by a Royal Society of New Zealand Marsden Fund Grant to Dr Roberts and Professor Anderson, a Te Papa Collection Development Grant as well as support by the Ministry of Science and Innovation via NIWA and the University of Western Australia.

The open-access article, which includes underwater videos, available through the following link: http://www.nature.com/srep/index.html

Watch a detailed behind-the-scenes tour of the facility with Dr Brett Gartrell

Watch the Stuff item.

Vice-Chancellor Steve Maharey with Prime Minister John Key.
(photo Maritime New Zealand)

Mr Maharey and Oiled Wildlife Response Unit director
Dr Brett Gartrell check the little blue penguins.

University staff rehabilitating birds at the Oiled Wildlife Response Unit in Tauranga had several high-profile visitors inspecting their work today.

Massey Vice-Chancellor Steve Maharey spent the morning on a pre-arranged visit to thank staff at the centre set up in the suburb of Te Maunga, near Mt Maunganui.

Many of them have been there since container ship Rena struck a reef 13 days ago setting off New Zealand's worst environmental disaster.

Prime Minister John Key and several senior politicians also visited the centre yesterday. "It’s incredible work they’re doing," Mr Key said. "‘One of the saddest images we have seen is of dead wildlife and we’re having to minimise that as much as we can.”

He was accompanied by cabinet colleague Tony Ryall and Tauranga MP Simon Bridges. Science and Innovation Minister Wayne Mapp also visited today as did Labour’s conservation spokeswoman Ruth Dyson.

The plight of birdlife, from little blue penguins to pied shags and rare New Zealand dotterels, caught up in the oil spill has resonated around the world. To date 235 have been retrieved, painstakingly cleaned and are being nursed back to health. Mr Maharey says he is very proud of the work being carried out by the University’s NZ Wildlife Health Centre, which has temporarily suspended operations at the Manawatu campus with virtually all staff now working in Tauranga.
 
“The group here are just doing a fantastic job, and they are potentially going to be here for some time,” Mr Maharey says.

The site of the rehabilitation centre continues to expand with another three tents erected to accommodate the demands on space to accommodate up to 500 birds.

Oiled Wildlife Response Unit director and Massey veterinarian Dr Brett Gartrell says further penguin swimming pools, with extra fixtures to allow the birds to swim in and exit the pool were also being set up.

Watch an amcam video taken in the gym.

Action and adrenalin at the Schools’ Robotics World Cup at The Cloud.

Check out the Australian Rugby Gold TV item.

Watch the 3News and Stuff items.

ormer All Black Andrew Mehrtens eyes up his opponent, Robo Dan, a
rugby ball-kicking robot created by students at the School of
Engineering and Advanced Technology, Albany

robotic line-up with metallic creations from Massey’s Manawatu and
Albany campuses, and Canterbury University at Victoria Park in Auckland.

Many think legendary former All Black Andrew Mehrtens has super-human powers when it comes to kicking a rugby ball. But a special robot created by Massey University Albany engineering students proved itself almost as good as its human rival in a man versus machine kick-off in Auckland yesterday.

Mr Mehrtens confronted three robots – one each from Massey’s Albany and Manawatu campuses, and another from Canterbury University – for the kick-off at Victoria Park. The fun event was part of the Rutherford Innovation showcase to highlight New Zealand’s innovative achievements in technology and industry during the Rugby World Cup.

Before a crowd of 100 or so onlookers and scores of international and local media, Mr Mehrtens tested his mettle against their metal in a series of conversion kicks over the goal posts using a Gilbert Rugby World Cup ball. The former Crusaders first five-eight player finally drew five-all with Massey’s Albany robot nicknamed ‘Robo Dan’ – a pneumatic-powered, muscular, metal leg attached to a human mannequin complete with swivelling robotic head.

Massey’s Manawatu robot,‘Woderwick’ cleared the goal posts beautifully during its warm-up but struggled with accuracy and distance later on, while Canterbury’s robot made up for missed attempts with its good drop kicking form. No groin injuries were reported.

Mr Mehrtens, an ambassador for NZ 2011, says the contest was “a tough ask” for the robots. “I’ve been doing this all my life. Along come some robots that were probably only born a couple of weeks ago.”
 
Associate Professor Johan Potgieter, mechatronics lecturer at Massey’s Albany campus, says he was delighted with the performance of the robot designed and created by his students. Creating a robot that could outdo an All Black legend took plenty of imagination and hard work. “It all starts with an idea, and how you innovate the idea. We look at nature, we look at some of the great rugby legends in this country and observe how they kick a ball. We realised it’s not just about power, it’s about timing too.”

He says the challenges of making the solid aluminium life-sized leg, which is joined to a mannequin, centred on getting the anatomy and movement accurate through kinematic design and computerised modelling.

The robotic leg is powered by pneumatic hoses, which are controlled by a Siemens XYZ programmable logic controller. It was made with the help of three visiting French engineering interns from Ensil, a state-owned advanced engineering school in Limoges, and local students. Robots like this one could be used in the testing of sports equipment such as rugby balls, he says.

NZ 2011 office director Leon Grice says the light-hearted contest has a serious purpose. “It showcases the innovation of New Zealand’s engineering students and universities which will be increasingly important for our country’s economic success. Making science fun with challenges like this helps promote engineering as a vocation and nurtures our future engineers.”

The robots will be on display during the first ever Robotics World Cup at The Cloud from October 11 to 13. Using the American-based Vex Robotics game model launched by Massey University in New Zealand in 2008, the event will involve 40 robots and university and high school teams from around New Zealand and Mexico designing, building and maintaining robots that compete in a game of speed, strategy, skill and adrenalin.