This multi-media art project investigates the notion of Cook Islands humour, and subsequently place, through the context of the religious pageant Nuku. This pageant has been practiced annually in the Cook Islands for over one hundred and sixty years. While it is not a pageant based on humour, I suggest, through experience and research, that many of the characteristics of Cook Islands humour are revealed in Nuku. The aim of this project is not to recreate the narrative set out in the Nuku pageant but to use this event to explore ways to visually express the humour of the Cook Islands. After researching and experimenting in two dimensional mediums, my emphasis changed to experimenting with three dimensional mediums, incorporating materials that have connotative meanings in Cook Islands society.

The quantity of seasonal snow stored in the Lake Pukaki catchment, New Zealand has a significant impact on the country's economy through its influence on hydroelectricity generation, tourism, agriculture and conservation. SnowSim is a snow storage model developed for New Zealand conditions that may be used to quantify the catchment's frozen water resource and the melt water derived from that resource. Through implementation on a geographic information system, SnowSim has been applied and optimised to the Lake Pukaki catchment. The optimal parameters found were: temperature-elevation lapse rate of 0.005 ℃ m⁻¹, snow/rain temperature threshold of 2.5 ℃, and a melt to temperature relationship factor ranging from 1 to 6 mm ℃⁻¹ d⁻¹. The melt to temperature relationship factor is significantly reduced from that previously used for a New Zealand wide application of SnowSim. Use of a daily measured lapse rate was found to provide no improvement to the model, considered to be because of the spatial variability of lapse rates. Inclusion of a radiation component also provided no improvement in the model. This is contrary to the experience found in similar model applications in other regions of the world. The lower relative importance of radiation melt (with regard to total melt) in the region compared to continental l℃ations may explain this result. The use of a new precipitation distribution system did improve model results. Daily precipitation measurements were related to a new annual average precipitation surface prior to interpolating them across the region, without any elevation to precipitation relationship. Model free water results required an offset adjustment to bring them into line with measured lake inflows limiting the application of the model to estimation of seasonal variation, relative magnitudes and event frequencies of snow storage. Over four years of data a model output quality criterion of 0.61 (where a value of 1 is a perfect model) was returned. This increased to 0.76 for monthly values indicating a high quality of output at the seasonal scale. Model parameters and output quality are in line with those found using comparable models for various applications around the world. The variety of outputs available from the model provide a valuable resource for applications in the electricity, tourism, conservation and agriculture industries as well as for climate, glacier, snow and mountain research.

Thesis--Cornell University.

Thèse (M.Sc.)--Université Laval, 2008. / Titre de l'écran-titre (visionné le 9 mai 2008). Bibliogr.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hawaii, 2001. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 486-500). Also available on microfiche.

Thesis--Cornell University.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Hawaii at Manoa, 1982 / Pacific Islands Studies

Bibliography: leaves 348-358 / xii, 358, ca. 50 leaves : ill., maps ; 30 cm. / Title page, contents and abstract only. The complete thesis in print form is available from the University Library. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Adelaide, Dept. of Anthropology, 1985

This study examines the interrelationships between migration patterns, population change, and socio-economic development in the Cook Islands of the south Pacific during the period 1966-80. Socio-economic "development" is defined as: (1) economic growth; (2) increasing social complexity; (3) an improvement in the physical quality of life. Two models of the relationship between migration and socio-economic development were extracted from the theoretical literature: one suggests that migration brings a range of socio-economic benefits to the "sending" society; the other claims that migration is costly to the sending society and is likely to promote its "underdevelopment". The effects of migration on population growth, age structure and sex balance, geographical distribution, labor force size and quality, during the post self-government period 1966-80, are examined in detail. The effects of these changes on the three dimensions of socio-economic development are explored and some of the monetary "costs" and "benefits" of migration are estimated. The net crude rate of emigration for the period was 27.3/1000 for the population as a whole, and 32.2/1000 for the Maori component taken separately. This rate of out-flow has reduced the average annual growth rate from a potential 3.2% to an actual rate of -0.6% over the 1966-76 intercensal period. The population has declined overall by 5.9% over the same period and some islands have dropped by as much as 55%. While most migrants are under 40 years of age, high fertility in the past means that the majority of the population is also under this age. Disproportionate migration occurs principally in the age range 15-24. The "working age" population of the Cook Islands as a whole declined by 2.6%; some islands did maintain a static labor force, however, while in others the labor force declined. No evidence was found to indicate that emigration improves the dependency burden or the sex ratio. Where the dependency ratio has improved, this can be attributed to declining fertility. A higher proportion of the population is concentrated on the main island of Rarotonga, but "urbanization" has actually decreased as a result of differential emigration by district. While it is clear that the demographic and socio-economic impact of migration varies from region to region, and island to island, the overall effect on the "development" of the Cook Islands has been negative. The period of large-scale emigration was accompanied by falling real GDP per capita and in total, declining production for export, and the loss of both social capital and occupational skills. The physical quality of life has improved over the period, but the rate of improvement has fallen-off as emigration increased in the mid 1970s. Remittance income from migrants abroad has increased as a proportion of total per capita income, leading to greater "dependency" on an external economy. Structural complexity has increased to a degree on Rarotonga, but some of the outer islands show signs of structural "devolution" and economic decline. It is argued that the declining population of the Cook Islands will tend to exacerbate the already severe problems of small scale and geographical dispersion in the micro-economy of the Cook Islands and will add considerable uncertainty to the processes of development planning. In the short-term dependency will probably increase as more foreign aid will be required to operate the political-administrative system. / Arts, Faculty of / Anthropology, Department of / Graduate

A low cost Cook-Off experimental facility has been established to provide a convenient method of ranking explosives in their response to Cook-Off by the time to event under two widely different heating rates and at two different scales. This thesis describes the literature review undertaken as preparation for the purposed study and all the experimental work developed comprising the design of the trials vehicles, the demonstration of their suitability for Fast and Slow Cook-Off trials with confined explosive systems, the preparation of the samples and test vehicles to be trialled as well as the set-up of adequate facilities to undertake the scheduled firing programme. Results are reported for Cook-Off tests on TNT, RDX, and their mixtures. The emphasis of the study is on time to event, and temperature at event, and in addition a qualitative assessment of the violence of the event was made by examination of the fragments of the vehicles, although it is accepted that the relatively light and low cost design of the vehicle may lead to variable confinement in the early stages of the explosive event, and hence to a wider spread of responses than would be obtained from a more heavily confined and more costly vehicle. The test vehicles give results, which differentiate between the various explosives and explosive mixtures trialled and between the scales. More experiments are required to establish the reproducibility of the measurements. The design of the equipment makes this a relatively inexpensive undertaking. The experiment was modelled using published kinetic data, but the calculated time to event differed from that observed to different extents at the two scales. It is hypothesised that the mechanism may change over the prolonged heat soaks and that quantitative scaling is not possible with the available information. Further work is also suggested using a different type of Cook-Off test vehicle, which will in our opinion reduce even further the cost of Cook-Off testing, due to reduction in man-hours of preparation involved and manufacture cost of the Cook-Off test vehicles, and consequently of ranking of explosives.