re
:
think
Winter 2013
6
M
ā
ori researcher seeing stars
Survey goes multi-lingual
AN international pre-release survey
of
The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey
threw up a variety of responses
regarding people’s perceptions and
expectations of the film.
Now Dr Carolyn Michelle from
the Audience Research Unit at the
University of Waikato in Hamilton (not
far from Hobbiton) with colleagues
from Waikato’s Screen and Media
Studies programme and collaborators
in Canada, the US, Belgium, the
Netherlands and Denmark want to
find out if people’s hopes were fulfilled
and confirmed after seeing the movie,
and how discussion, debate, marketing
and promotion of a film shaped
subsequent responses to it. “We had
responses from all over the world
in the first phase, but mostly from
countries where English is dominant,
though we did get replies from Russia,
Lithuania, Brazil, India, Finland, Japan
and further afield. In the second phase,
we’ve already had 2,000 responses and
are now posting the survey in Danish,
French, Dutch, German and Spanish,
to get an even broader response.”
SCIENCE student Kiriana Isgrove spent her
summer at AgResearch working with a team
that’s studying marbling in meat. They want
to find out as much as they can about how and
why it forms, because the more marbling, the
better the quality and therefore the better the
price for the producer.
Kiriana, of Ngati Tamatera descent, has
just started her second year at the University
of Waikato where she’s planning to double
major in biological and environmental
sciences. She was awarded a Māori summer
internship by AgResearch and worked with
Dr Mônica Senna Salerno who assigned her
to DNA amplification – which makes genetic
material easier to use and assess.
“Kiriana worked briefly on a couple of other
projects,” saysDr Salerno. “One investigating the
relationship between myostatin and ruminant
fat differentiation in vitro and the other on
animal muscle wasting and growth, and then
she moved on to collecting samples from lamb
meat for histological analysis to determine best
preservation methods for the meat.”
“It was a great experience,” says Kiriana,
“especially for a first-year student like me, to
be given the opportunity to do some quite
detailed work.”
She says once it’s prepared and placed
in special tubes, the DNA goes through a
range of different cycles in a ‘light-cycler
PCR (polymerase chain reaction)’ machine to
amplify it, “and the software was complicated,
Internship helping to find out what determines marbling in meat
not very logical, which took some working
out”. From there the material is put through
gel electrophoresis, a method for separation
and analysis of DNA, RNA and proteins and
their fragments, based on their size and charge.
“It’s a bit like putting the material through
a strainer or sieve,” she says. “The different
sized molecules travel different lengths in the
gel which allows us to isolate what we want
to analyse.”
HANDS-ON RESEARCH: Waikato BSc student Kiriana Isgrove worked on DNA amplification
on her Māori summer internship at AgResearch.
Dr Salerno says Kiriana was a fantastic
student with lots of drive to learn and a
very inquisitive mind. “She proved to be
an excellent and intelligent worker, with
an impeccable work ethic. I’d like to think
she has a promising career in the pastoral
research sector.”
The AgResearch internship programme
is full-time and runs for 10 weeks over the
summer break giving up to four Māori students
the opportunity to experience work in a
research environment. It’s part of AgResearch’s
aim to increase Māori involvement and
capacity in research, science and technology.
Kiriana says there were third-year students
doing internships too and they told her how
lucky she was to be doing the internship in
her first year. “I think having the practical
experience will make it easier for me to
understand a lot of the theory we cover in the
BSc degree. I definitely feel more confident
about what I’m doing.”
The former Hauraki Plains College student
says long-term she’d like to do biological
research, but thinks she’d better earn some
money first, perhaps as an environmental
adviser, before focusing on scientific research.
Kiriana has also been awarded a
University of Waikato Māori Excellence
Scholarship which contributes to her
course fees, and is a recipient of the Clark
Fletcher Memorial Citrus Bursary worth up
to $5,000.
•
The University of Waikato also offers
Summer Research Scholarships every
year for undergraduate and first year
masters students, keen to experience
practical research. The scholarships, for
10 weeks, are worth up to $5,000. For
more information visit
waikato.ac.nz/
research/scholarships/SRSStudent
OnlineForm.shtml
HOBBIT STUDY: Dr Carolyn Michelle
surveying ‘Hobbit’ reaction.
DR RANGI MATAMUA: He says many Māori traditions are “riddled” with astronomy references including
waiata, carvings and the language.
A University of Waikato academic is reaching for
the stars in an effort to reassert Māori knowledge of
the celestial realm.
Dr Rangi Matamua from the Tikanga
Department of the School of Māori & Pacific
Development is part of a group of Māori researchers
from around the country involved with SMART
– the Society for Māori Astronomy Research and
Traditions – who are delving into the fascinating
world of Māori astronomy.
Dr Matamua has started putting together a
comprehensive book on Māori astronomy, is
planning a Summer School course on the subject
and even has a Māori astronomy Smartphone app
on the cards.
“Astronomy is an awesome field,” he says.
Traditional Māori knowledge of the stars covers
a wide range of areas including gardening, fishing,
building homes and navigation.
“Māori had wonderful knowledge of the
movement of stars,” he says.
“With the seasons, the position of stars, when
they rise and when they set. They had to have this
knowledge to be able to voyage across the largest
ocean in the world.”
Dr Matamua says for Māori, knowledge of
astronomy was “part of their world” but much of
that knowledge had been lost over time.
Many Māori traditions are, he says, “riddled”
with astronomy references.
“It’s in waiata, carvings, the language, you name it.”
Even the Māori view of creation – with Rangi
and Papa being separated into the Earth mother and
Sky Father – had astronomical references, he says.
According to Dr Matamua, his native Tuhoe have
what’s considered among the most comprehensive
records of astronomy.
Dr Matamua says the rise in prominence of events
such as Matariki – the Māori name for the Pleiades
star cluster, with Matariki celebrations marking its
first rising in late May or early June – particularly
over the past 20 years, is encouraging and he is
hopeful of reviving other traditional aspects of
astronomy and bringing them into a modern context.
“Not just revive it, but it has to have a place it can
live. It has a place in modern day astrophysics.
“Māori need to reclaim their own space, it’s time
for us to reclaim our knowledge and talk about who
we are in our own voice.”
rmatamua@waikato.ac.nz
The researchers say this study is
the first large-scale international film
reception study using Q methodology.
Q methodology takes a quantitative
and qualitative approach to create a
conceptual map of people’s subjective
responses. Survey participants are
asked to rank a set of statements,
rather than simply agree or disagree.
http://flashq.rcc.ryerson.ca/Hobbit/