Our Changing World

Justin Gregory finds out about a study investigating how pre-term babies are fed during their first few weeks, and whether there is a better way.

Busy and happy, Isla Rothwell is a confident toddler with a great giggle. She loves an adventure.

'Oblivious to danger is the current mode,' says mum Olivia. '" What are you doing on the table and how did you even get up there?"'

But 21-month-old Isla isn't your everyday toddler. She was born seven weeks early, giving her family a big shock.

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Isla was healthy and a good weight, so the morning after she was born, her parents were approached by a researcher from the Liggins Institute, part of the University of Auckland's School of Medical and Health Sciences. Isla and her family were being asked to play a part in a unique investigation into the care of pre-term babies, called the DIAMOND Study.

DIAMOND stands for Different Approaches to Moderate & late preterm Nutrition: Determinants of feed tolerance, body composition and development. The study, which began in 2017 with 528 babies across four different hospitals, is believed to be the largest of its kind in the world, and is run by Professor Frank Bloomfield, a neonatologist and the director of the Liggins.

Each year, around 5000 New Zealand babies are born prematurely (before 37 weeks gestation); 85% of them between 32 and 37 weeks. They usually need to stay in a neo-natal intensive care unit, or NICU, until close to their original due date.

"They look like term babies, they behave in many ways like term babies, and we think their outcomes are like term babies', explains Frank.

But that may not be the whole story, he says.

'These babies are at increased risk of a variety of issues that affect their health in later life. Obesity, Type-2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease and also developmental issues.'

Large scale studies over the last 20 years have followed pre-term babies into adulthood and have uncovered these worrying findings. A variety of factors are involved, but one of them may be the care these pre-term babies receive after birth.

The DIAMOND study is investigating how pre-term babies are fed during their first few weeks and whether there is a better way. And all the babies in the study really have to do is to have a good kai…

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Stories about looking our warming world in the eye, and preparing for what is coming next. Collecting data about extreme temperatures in estuaries to help manage shellfish populations. Plus what might managed retreat of marae threatened by sea level rise mean for MÄori communities.

We know that global temperatures are on the rise, and even if we could stop all greenhouse gas emissions tomorrow some impacts would still be locked in. 2021 was New Zealand's warmest year on record. Could it also have been the coldest year of the rest of our lives?

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In the week that the IPCC has checked our homework and found that global efforts to reduce emissions are coming up short, we need to prepare for a future that includes warmer temperatures, sea level rise and increased extreme weather events. This week's episode includes two stories of researchers doing just that.

The extreme life of a cockle

Estuary intertidal regions are interesting environments uniquely impacted by warming of both the air and the sea. During daytime low tides uncovered sediment is heated by the sun. Incoming shallow water flowing over this hot sand or mud gets warmed to bathwater temperatures.

Therefore, combinations of land and ocean heatwaves, coupled with low tides in the middle of the day when the sun is at its hottest, lead to extreme temperature events in these environments. These are exactly what University of Auckland researcher Dr. Rebecca Gladstone-Gallagher wants to capture.

Rebecca is leading a project to deploy a network of temperature sensors, or loggers, in 25 locations across New Zealand's estuaries. Long term temperature loggers will remain out for a year, capturing the general trend over 20-minute intervals. But to get details on these extreme temperature events, Rebecca is also deploying loggers that will take readings every two minutes.

For these deployments she has chosen hot weeks with low tides in the middle of the day. The loggers will be placed just above and within the sediment, in cockle bed areas, so that Rebecca can get an idea of exactly what the animals are experiencing.

Claire Concannon joins Rebecca and her collaborator Professor Conrad Pilditch of the University of Waikato to learn more about the cockles that live in these estuaries, and how Rebecca hopes that this monitoring will help them.

Rebecca's work is funded by a 2020 Marsden fund.

Coastal marae and sea level rise…

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At the Malaghan Institute of Medical Research a team of scientists are working on what they believe will be the future of cancer treatment in New Zealand.

When she imagines the future of cancer treatment, Yasmin Nouri sees a very different landscape. Instead of chemotherapy, a blunt technique aimed at all fast growing cells, she envisions therapies that are personalised to the patient and targeted towards cancer cells.

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Yasmin hopes that she can play a part in the development of this next phase of cancer therapies. In her final year of her PhD at the Malaghan Institute for Medical Research, she is researching a type of cancer treatment called CAR T-cell therapy. In this therapy, the patient's own immune cells, their T-cells, are genetically modified so that they have a new receptor on them - one that recognises cancer.

Normally our T-cells don't recognise cancer cells as an issue because they are our own cells, rather than a virus or bacteria. The added Chimeric Antigen Receptor (CAR) allows the T-cells to do their job, which is to target and kill threats to the body.

In particular, Yasmin is working alongside the Phase I clinical trial  currently underway to investigate the safety and efficacy of the CAR T-cell therapy that has been developed at the institute. This trial is specific to patients with a certain type of B-cell lymphoma who have exhausted all other treatment options. Yasmin is running tests in the lab to get into the nitty-gritty of exactly how this therapy works in the body.

She is part of the CAR T-cell therapy research team led by Dr. Rachel Perret. Some CAR T-cell therapies are currently licensed for use in other countries, including the US, the UK and Australia. However, they are expensive, can have serious side effects, and can only be used on particular types of cancers. The aim of the research team is to investigate ways to make CAR T-cell therapy safer, more effective, cheaper and applicable to a wider range of cancers.

Also part of the team is postdoctoral fellow Dr. Patricia Rubio-Reyes. Patricia is focused on research to make CAR T-cell therapy safer, by installing an 'off' switch that will kill off the T-cells if side effects occur. She is also investigating how CAR T-cells could be used to target cancers that cause tumors.

Listen to the episode to hear Rachel, Yasmin and Patricia discuss their research and their hopes for the future of cancer treatment. 

To learn more:   …

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Two stories on addressing our energy problem - using AI to maximise locally produced renewable energy and reducing the carbon footprint of ammonia production.

The latest release from the IPCC sixth assessment report on impacts, adaptation and vulnerability didn't hold back on dire warnings. The UN secretary general referred to it as a 'code red for humanity'.

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We know that we can't continue to produce energy by burning fossils fuels. We must reduce energy demand and use alternative energy sources.

We don't have all the answers yet, but researchers at Te Herenga Waka - Victoria University of Wellington are working on some solutions for this energy problem.

Keeping the lights on - sustainable energy systems

A reliable electricity supply underpins our modern life. Most of us get the power we need from the national electricity grid, oblivious to the work that the power companies and Transpower do to balance the competing requirements of supply and demand - when power is produced versus when we want to use it.

But there is a growing interest in a range of renewable energy systems, with electricity produced locally by various solar, micro-hydro, wave and biomass systems, and stored locally for later use. Coming up with the best ways of using these micro power grids is what interests Professor Alan Brent.

Alan heads Victoria University of Wellington's Sustainable Energy Centre, and along with postdoctoral researcher Dr. Soheil Mohseni, Alan spends a lot of time thinking about the way electricity generation might look and work in the future.

Using AI to optimise energy systems

Soheil is developing an artificial intelligence system or AI that he hopes will help small communities work out the best energy system to meet their particular requirements. Soheil's work recognises that each small rural community running its own micro power grid is unique, so there is no one size fits all solution. To account for this Soheil uses optimisation algorithms, in which the computer program repeatedly analyses different scenarios until it identifies the best solution…

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A story of a community taking the lead to investigate their own history. Near the small fishing village of Moeraki, whānau members are doing the work of excavating, sorting, and identifying artifacts from an old Māori archaeological site.

Standing over a stainless-steel sink, spray gun in hand, Robyn Maguigan is ready to wash and sieve a pile of jumbled up bones, rocks, shells and charcoal she has dug up. Items that will help tell the story about how her tūpuna lived.

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Robyn and her whānau whakapapa to Moeraki, a fishing village not far north of Dunedin on the east coast of Te Wai Pounamu. As does archaeologist and Curator Māori at Tūhura Otago Museum Dr. Gerard O'Regan.

So when Gerard spotted a dark line and some obsidian in an eroding cliff face at the edge of the urupā at Tikoraki point on the Moeraki peninsula, he knew he was looking at the remains of an early Māori settlement site.

Digging at the edge of the urupā for a tree planting project organised by Te Rūnanga o Moeraki confirmed this. When fish bones and shells started to surface Gerard realised they had found a midden - an early domestic dumping site where the remains of what people were eating and tools they were using are left.

With erosion threatening the area, and a flourishing rabbit population burrowing into the site, it seemed important to recover and catalogue the material from the midden before the story was lost. Especially when preliminary radiocarbon dating of a pāua shell indicated that it could be from 600 years ago.

But instead of calling in others to do it on their behalf, the community decided to take the lead themselves. Te Rūnanga o Moeraki put out a notice, a pānui, and got warm support from the wider Moeraki whānau, including from Robyn's mum, kaumātua Aunty Reita of the Tipa whānau. With help from archaeologists from the University of Otago, the community have done the excavations at the site themselves - pegging out, digging and sieving to collect the material.

In the next phase the whānau travelled to Dunedin to the archaeology department labs at the University of Otago to wash, dry, and sort through the recovered bones, shells, charcoal and bits of tools.

Claire Concannon visits them in the lab to learn more. 

This project is supported by MBIE's Curious Minds Otago Participatory Science Platform funding to enable community involvement. It is lead by Te Rūnanga o Moeraki and Moeraki whānau members, and supported by staff and students from the Archaeology programme at the University of Otago and staff from Tūhura Otago Museum.

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This sea week Our Changing World joins Dr. Kim Currie on the Munida transect time-series - a long running investigation of how the chemistry of the oceans off New Zealand is changing.

Six times a year, for the last 23 years, Dr. Kim Currie has made the same boat journey, for the same reason - to collect valuable ocean chemistry data.

As Kim knows, sometimes good science takes time.

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The Munida transect time series, named after the research vessel it started on, has been running since 1998. Back then, we didn't know about ocean acidification - how the ocean's chemistry is changing as it absorbs carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

When she started the study, Kim was interested in how New Zealand oceans were involved in the movement of carbon between the land, sea and air. So, she picked a 65 km transect line off the coast of Dunedin, one that crosses an interesting area where subantarctic and subtropical water masses meet, and she began to collect data.

Today, Kim follows this same transect line six times a year and gathers data in the same careful, consistent manner. While the boat steams along, Kim collects a myriad of surface ocean chemistry measurements, as well as water samples for later carbon content analysis.

There is a lot of natural variation in something as dynamic as the South Pacific Ocean. Only because of Kim's careful data collection over a long period have they been able to tease out the trend that shows that the pH of the open ocean is indeed dropping, as a result of the oceans absorbing more carbon dioxide.

For Kim collaboration is key. Collaboration with the global science community to ensure that data is collected the same way and therefore comparable. Collaboration across New Zealand to establish a New Zealand Ocean Acidification Observing Network to investigate coastal changes. And collaboration with staff and students at the University of Otago to maximise the use of the research vessel and the time at sea. 

This New Zealand Seaweek, listen as Claire Concannon climbs aboard the University of Otago's research vessel the Polaris II to learn more about this globally important study and to find out about the wide range of other research happening along the way.

Thanks to Dr Kim Currie of NIWA, University of Otago students Erik Johnson, Hannah Heynderickx, Jordon Sparrow, Nico Daudt and Oscar Thomas, University of Otago research technician Judith Murdoch, and to Graeme Loh.

To learn more:  

- Listen to this Our Changing World episode about ocean acidification from April 2021…

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Creating safe spaces for wildlife to thrive means benefit for the local community too. This week, two stories on that theme.

We know humans benefit when biodiversity flourishes. This week, Claire Concannon brings us two stories about providing sanctuary for fish, and how local communities also gain from these spaces.

Listen to DOC ranger Tim Shaw and Mountains to Sea director Zoe Studd on Our Changing World

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Marine Reserve Sightseeing

Marine reserves are areas in the ocean completely protected from sea surface to seafloor - safe spaces for marine life to flourish. But, compared to a stroll through a protected area of bush or wetland, it's a bit harder to notice wildlife returning.

The Mountains to Sea Wellington group acts as 'Tinder for nature' - connecting people and te taiao. Some of their summer activities include community snorkel days, a free opportunity for local Wellingtonians to get to know the underwater wildlife in their backyards.

After taking part in one of the snorkel events at Island Bay in Wellington, Claire sits down with executive director Zoe Studd to find out more about the work of the group, the community snorkel days, and the changes she has seen after 14 years of the Taputeranga Marine Reserve. 

Making Space for Inanga

New Zealand's native migratory freshwater fish are not having a good time.

The inanga's habitat is being destroyed as they also suffer due to poor water quality, dams and culverts block their way, they get eaten by introduced fish, and each year their juveniles are fished as whitebait. Unsurprisingly, their numbers are in decline.

The West Coast sustainable wild whitebait fisheries project aims to help the threatened whitebait species (inanga, kōaro, and the giant, banded and short jaw kōkopu), by providing more and better habitats for them along the South Island's West Coast.

Having received Mahi mō te Taiao/Jobs for Nature funding, the project, led by the West Coast Regional Council, is working with Conservation Volunteers New Zealand and the Department of Conservation to create a whitebait sanctuary on an 18-hectare site at Wadeson Island just outside Hokitika. In addition, fish passage assessment, weeding and fencing will take place on rivers and streams along the coast.

The West Coast sustainable wild whitebait fisheries project team involves representatives from: DOC, University of Canterbury, West Coast Regional Council, Ngāti Waewae, Te Rūnanga o Maakawhio, West Coast Whitebaiters Association, West Coast Conservation Board and commercial whitebaiters.

To learn more: …

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Alison Ballance catches up with two earthquake researchers. Geologist Carolyn Boulton is a "fault finder", interested in how faults slide. And geophysicist Martha Savage eavesdrops on the earth to better understand why earthquakes do what they do.

Dr Carolyn Boulton is a structural geologist at Victoria University of Wellington and she sees things in rocks that most of us would never notice. Including finding beauty in greywacke, which is a common, rather ordinary grey rock that most geologists would regard as somewhat dull.

Carolyn's real passion, however, is earthquakes and the way faults - and greywacke faults in particular - behave.

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Finding faults

A fault is a sliding zone, where two blocks of rock slip past one another during an earthquake. That slipping is often lubricated by fault gouge, a fine-grained clay-like substance that is created by the grinding pressure of the rocks on either side.

Carolyn has become an expert fault hunter, reading the landscape for clues about its past. Last winter she noticed that big floods in the Hutt River had washed away a thick layer of gravels to reveal a new exposure of the Wellington Fault. She has been returning to the site to study it and collect samples of the fault gouge. She will study these small samples in overseas labs under high temperature and pressure, like those experienced within the fault itself, and she hopes the data will shed new light on why faults sometimes slide and sometimes stick.

Eavesdropping on earthquakes

Geophysicists such as Professor Martha Savage, from Victoria University of Wellington, often use seismic noise to visualise what lies beneath the ground. Noise, after all, is just vibrations and seismic noise is the earth vibrating in response to all sorts of things - including earthquakes, as well as wind, people walking and passing traffic.

Geophysicists use seismographs or seismometers to detect this noise and there is a network of these positioned all around the country.

Martha and colleagues have been developing some sophisticated methods that use the background seismic noise collected by this nationwide network of seismic detectors in new ways. These methods can help determine the structure of the earth and they might also be useful in future for developing earthquake detection and early warning systems.

Martha has also been working on an EQC funded project that is installing seismic detectors around Wellington and the Wairarapa next to existing water monitoring stations, to measure how both the ground itself as well as groundwater levels respond during earthquakes.

To learn more:…

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Claire visits a macroalgae research facility in Tauranga to learn how and why the team there are growing large quantities of seaweed and freshwater macroalgae.

At Sulphur Point in Tauranga sits a warehouse-sized greenhouse, designed for just one purpose - to grow macroalgae.

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The Facility for Aquaculture Research of Macroalgae, or FARM, is key to the work of the University of Waikato's macroalgal biotechnologies programme, led by Dr. Marie Magnusson. The multi-million dollar facility allows researchers to figure out how best to grow large quantities of macroalgae, as well as explore the potential uses of different species.

As researcher Dr. Rebecca Lawton explains, native seaweed or freshwater algae is harvested from different areas of the Bay of Plenty and brought to the facility to be cultivated and studied. First, in small batches to work out what species or individual will grow best in their controlled conditions, and then in larger quantities to extract the component that they need.

The macroalgae can be separated into different fractions and analysed at the on-site chemistry lab, under the watchful eye of Dr. Chris Glasson. With the goal of ensuring every part of the harvested macroalgae is used, the team have been working with industry and other partners on a range of applications, including animal and human food, health supplements and materials science.

In a local collaboration with Aqua Curo, the team have developed a system to allow bioremediation of wastewater by freshwater macroalgae at the nearby Te Puke wastewater treatment plant - the algae sucks the excess nutrients out of the wastewater as a last clean-up step before discharge. And, based on previous research work that showed promise in animal models, and in collaboration with partners at Lincoln University, they are also about to begin a clinical trial investigating the potential of sea lettuce pills to help people with metabolic disorders.

Plus the researchers have also been experimenting with their own seaweed recipes, though some remain.... contentious.

The Enterpreneurial Universities Macroalgal Biotechnology Enterprises Programme and facilities is funded by the Tertiary Education Commission and the University of Waikato. The clinical study mentioned by Dr. Chris Glasson is also partially funded by an internal grant from Lincoln University awarded to Dr Catherine Elliot. The freswhater bioremediation work mentioned at Te Puke wastewater treatment plant is funded by Aqua Curo.

To learn more

Visit the groups webpage

Find out more about the bioremediation project mentioned at Aqua Curo's website.

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