University of Canterbury

About: University of Canterbury is a education organization based out in Christchurch, New Zealand. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Large Hadron Collider. The organization has 11100 authors who have published 29846 publications receiving 893232 citations. The organization is also known as: Te Whare Wānanga o Waitaha & Canterbury College.

Localized globalization: A multi-local, multivariate investigation of quotative be like

Abstract: We conduct a multi-local, multivariate analysis of be like in comparable datasets from three discontinuous geographic settings (the U.S.A., England, and New Zealand). Previously, comparative cross-variety analysis of this form has been fundamentally hampered by key methodological differences. A methodologically coherent analysis reveals that the ‘classic factors’ (Tagliamonte and D’Arcy 2007: 203) grammatical person and content of the quote, as well as the effect of mimesis, are transferred to the receptor variety, albeit with varying degrees of completeness. Other conditioning factors are particularized to the local system into which be like is adopted, which leads us to define its spread as a case of weak transfer. We suggest that there are at least two explanations for this finding: (1) global innovations must be considered in light of the local systems into which they are adopted; and (2) the form and amount of contact must be correlated with respect to the knowledge transfer they allow.

Gauss-Bonnet cosmologies: crossing the phantom divide and the transition from matter dominance to dark energy

Abstract: Dark energy cosmologies with an equation of state parameter w less than −1 are often found to violate the null energy condition and show unstable behaviour. A solution to this problem may require the existence of a consistent effective theory that violates the null energy condition only momentarily and does not develop any instabilities or other patholog- ical features for a late time cosmology. A model which incorporates a dynamical scalar field ϕ coupled to the quadratic Riemann invariant of the Gauss-Bonnet form is a viable proposal. Such an effective theory is shown to admit nonsingular cosmological evolutions for a wide range of scalar-Gauss-Bonnet coupling. We discuss the conditions for which our model yields observationally supported spectra of scalar and tensor fluctuations, under cosmological per- turbations. The model can provide a reasonable explanation for the transition from matter dominance to dark energy regime and the late time cosmic acceleration, offering an interesting testing ground for investigations of the cosmological modified gravity.

Possible Loss of the Chloroplast Genome in the Parasitic Flowering Plant Rafflesia lagascae (Rafflesiaceae)

Abstract: Rafflesia is a genus of holoparasitic plants endemic to Southeast Asia that has lost the ability to undertake photosynthesis. With short-read sequencing technology, we assembled a draft sequence of the mitochondrial genome of Rafflesia lagascae Blanco, a species endemic to the Philippine island of Luzon, with ~350 sequencing depth coverage. Using multiple approaches, however, we were only able to identify small fragments of plastid sequences at low coverage depth (<2) and could not recover any substantial portion of a chloroplast genome. The gene fragments we identified included photosynthesis and energy production genes (atp,ndh,pet,psa,psb,rbcL), ribosomal RNA genes (rrn16,rrn23), ribosomal protein genes (rps7,rps11,rps16), transfer RNA genes, as well as matK,accD,ycf2, and multiple nongenic regions from the inverted repeats. None of the identified plastid gene sequences had intact reading frames. Phylogenetic analysis suggests that ~33% of these remnant plastid genes may have been horizontally transferred from the host plant genus Tetrastigma with the rest having ambiguous phylogenetic positions (<50% bootstrap support), except for psaB that was strongly allied with the plastid homolog in Nicotiana. Our inability to identify substantial plastid genome sequences from R. lagascae using multiple approaches—despite success in identifying and developing a draft assembly of the much larger mitochondrial genome—suggests that the parasitic plant genus Rafflesia may be the first plant group for which there is no recognizable plastid genome, or if presen ti s found in cryptic form at very low levels.

Measuring transit performance using data envelopment analysis

Abstract: Transit managers, like managers of other public agencies, need to assess the performance of their system compared to peer agencies. This assessment must measure not only how efficient the agency is in producing transit service, but also how effective it is in having that service consumed. This paper uses data envelopment analysis (DEA) to develop a single measure for the efficiency and a single measure for the effectiveness of a transit agency relative to other agencies within the same peer group. By using a single measure for each of these criteria, this paper provides a more robust indicator of transit peformance than the widely used multiple ratio analysis performed in the Irvine Performance Evaluation Method (IPEM). The DEA model is applied to two transit agency peer groups--one serving large metropolitan areas and the other serving relatively small cities and large towns. These examples illustrate the importance of distinguishing between measures of efficiency and effectiveness as well as the sensitivity of the DEA model to the choice of input variables.

Dual influences of ecosystem size and disturbance on food chain length in streams

Abstract: The number of trophic transfers occurring between basal resources and top predators, food chain length (FCL), varies widely in the world's ecosystems for reasons that are poorly understood, particularly for stream ecosystems. Available evidence indicates that FCL is set by energetic constraints, environmental stochasticity, or ecosystem size effects, although no single explanation has yet accounted for FCL patterns in a broad sense. Further, whether environmental disturbance can influence FCL has been debated on both theoretical and empirical grounds for quite some time. Using data from sixteen South Island, New Zealand streams, we determined whether the so-called ecosystem size, disturbance, or resource availability hypotheses could account for FCL variation in high country fluvial environments. Stable isotope-based estimates of maximum trophic position ranged from 2.6 to 4.2 and averaged 3.5, a value on par with the global FCL average for streams. Model-selection results indicated that stream size and disturbance regime best explained across-site patterns in FCL, although resource availability was negatively correlated with our measure of disturbance; FCL approached its maximum in large, stable springs and was <3.5 trophic levels in small, fishless and/or disturbed streams. Community data indicate that size influenced FCL, primarily through its influence on local fish species richness (i.e., via trophic level additions and/or insertions), whereas disturbance did so via an effect on the relative availability of intermediate predators (i.e., predatory invertebrates) as prey for fishes. Overall, our results demonstrate that disturbance can have an important food web-structuring role in stream ecosystems, and further imply that pluralistic explanations are needed to fully understand the range of structural variation observed for real food webs.