Maori Fish Hooks
A. Maori fish hooks, made from wood, bone, stone, and flax, are intended to have the best possible design and function. The hooks are designed to target specific species with precision. In the industry of commercial long-line fishing, there are some Maori hook designs that are making a splash.
B. When Polynesians first came to New Zealand sometime within the years 1100–1300 AD, they didn't have the technology necessary to heat and manipulate metal out of rocks. Meanwhile, fish was the settlers' main food source at the time, so fishermen made their hooks and fishing gear out of wood, bone, stone, and shells. Other plants native to the island of New Zealand, such as flax (harakeke), cabbage tree (ti), and astelia (kiekie), provided the necessary fibrous material to make fishing lines and nets of greater or equal strength to the jute used by Europeans at the time. However, as a material, metal is more malleable and can be shaped in various ways, whereas natural materials are limited in the forms they can take. The Maori fish hooks needed to be more innovative in overcoming these limitations.
C. Early accounts of Europeans who settled and explored New Zealand claimed that Maori hooks, known as matau, were "odd," "of doubtful efficacy," "very clumsy affairs," or "impossible looking." Archaeologists from more recent times have also described the round hook as odd, with comments such as, "shaped in a manner which makes it very difficult to imagine could ever be effective in catching a fish." William Anderson, who was aboard the Resolution during Cook's third voyage in 1777 as the ship's surgeon, remarked that the Maori "live chiefly by fishing, making use… of wooden fish hooks pointed with bone, but so oddly made that a stranger is at a loss to know how they can answer such a purpose."
D. The Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa conducted a study on Maori fish hooks 230 years later and demonstrated that the unique hook design was a matter of function. The hook's design allowed it to catch fish by spinning away from the direction of the point and catching their jaws, instead of poking a hole through the fish or being used as a lever, as some archaeologists had suggested. It appears that the design of the Maori fish hook is perhaps the world's most efficiently and masterfully designed, likely superior to any modern metal fish hook today.
E. To make larger hooks, Maori used shanks made of strong wood, with stout points made of bone or shell. They tied tree branches and saplings together to grow them into ideal shapes for building, then harvested the plants when they reached the appropriate size. They hardened wood by carefully drying it and burying it underground with fires lit above. Human bone was often used for bone points, which were securely lashed to a groove at the end of the shank using pre-made flax materials (muka). When they wanted to catch larger species like sharks, groper, and ling, they used composite hooks. However, on average, the traditional hook was usually no longer than a three-finger breadth (128 mm in length).
F. To capture seabirds for food and feathers, like albatross, the islanders used slender hooks that can be differentiated from other hooks intended for fish by their lighter build and lack of an inturned point. Many of these hooks were collected by early explorers, suggesting that seabird catching with hook and line was an important source of food and feathers for the Maori (105 mm in length). Slender hooks with wide gapes were used to capture albatross and other seabirds and can be distinguished from fish hooks by their lighter construction and absence of an inturned point. Early explorers collected many of these hooks, which could indicate that catching seabirds provided significant amounts of food and feathers for the Maori.
G. The Maori quickly adopted new materials once they became available through European explorers, sealers, and whalers who began arriving towards the end of the 1700s. At this point, the Maori were still making their fish hooks but were now using metals and imported materials. Wooden and flax components of old, abandoned fish hooks decomposed quickly as traditional hooks were discarded in favor of new ones. Tools made of luxury materials such as ivory or greenstone may have been kept as decorative items, with stylized Maori fish hooks today serving as a symbol of cultural revitalization.
H. The Maori continued to recreate traditional designs even as new materials became available, preferring hook shapes introduced by Pakeha in the 1800s. By maintaining the tradition of the rotating hook design, they remained connected to an essential part of their cultural heritage. In the end, however, mass-produced European metal hooks eventually dominated, making it difficult to continue crafting hooks from nails, horseshoes, and other metal objects. Eventually, traditional designs fell out of favor.
I. By the late 19th and early 20th centuries, tourist and collector demand for Maori artifacts had grown, leading manufacturers to produce large quantities of forged hooks. These replicas were then traded with both Maori and Europeans as forgeries of the real thing, sometimes directly commissioned by artifact dealers. Fake hooks can be identified by their cheap construction, inconsistent materials, rudimentary lashings, odd or overly elaborate decorative carvings, and the absence of in-turned points or angled grooves used to attach the fishing line properly.
J. The evolution of matau throughout history symbolizes how the Maori have adapted to European tools, materials, and technology over time. It also reflects how European influence contributed to, rather than completely replaced, traditional Maori skills, as native materials were replaced or complemented by metals and, more recently, artificial materials. Today, commercial longline fishermen around the world have begun using the circle hook design—one that is nearly identical in appearance and function to the traditional matau. It appears that the advantages and improved catch rates of this Maori technology have once again been recognized.
Health IT in New Zealand
A. At some time in their lives, nearly all New Zealanders will have to attend an after-hours clinic following an emergency or accident. On entering the consulting room, the patient is faced with a barrage of questions. The first ones relate to the current episode, and are followed by more general enquiries. Do you have any allergies? Are you on any medications? And so on. But imagine a different scenario. The patient walks into the consulting room and there on the healthcare professional's computer screen is his or her medical record in its entirety — allergies, medications, test results and everything else. To some, it's amazing that this isn't happening already. After all, individuals can track their bank accounts, phone records and countless other transactions online, so why can't they track their health? Ian McCrae, Orion Health's CEO, says that it's understandable if health often falls behind other sectors in its adoption of information technology (IT). It might be, he argues, because of concerns about patient privacy, but also because health care is just so complicated.
B. The irony is, New Zealand started out being ahead of the game. The backbone of any health IT system is having a unique identifier for each patient, and New Zealand's national health index (NHI) number system was introduced in 1993, before most other countries in the world. Innovation then slowed for some years, but in 2011 the earthquake in Canterbury, which affected thousands of people, was a catalyst for health IT in that region of the country. Suddenly, many people couldn't be seen by their usual doctor and many health records were inaccessible. An existing plan for an electronic shared record was fast-tracked, and within six months a basic system, HealthOne, was up and running. By 2013, clinicians in the hospital emergency department were able to see all relevant medical information about patients. Dr. Nigel Millar, Chief Medical Officer for the Canterbury region, says within days doctors were telling him the information had already revolutionised the way they worked.
C. This idea, known as a 'patient portal', is now in operation in other parts of the country, including the capital Wellington. With a mobile app patients can remain connected to their patient portal on their mobile device, allowing for added flexibility. However, there's a lot of complacency in medicine, according to Dr. Richard Medlicott. He says that innovative IT systems have the potential to radically change health care delivery, because they will free doctors from routine administrative tasks and instead allow them to focus on diagnosis and patient care, which is where their skills are really needed. But he admits there is some way to go in the adoption of shared care records, and also in changing the mindset of some doctors who are resistant to change. A good example of technology in use comes from Australia, where the National Home Doctor Service has brought back a service that was becoming infrequent — the home visit. The after hours service uses an app to arrange an on-call doctor who will visit patients at home to provide on-the-spot healthcare.
D. A key part of the health IT picture is maintaining a dialogue and exchange of ideas between healthcare professionals, according to Kate Reid, a director at Orion Health. Reid says this is critical, but it's not easy because there are so many different agencies that are sometimes in competition. Another issue, Reid says, is that there are many information systems that are being trialled today. However, these trials are not big enough to determine if they could ever work at a national level. One area where cooperation in health IT really could deliver benefits is in disease prevention and early intervention, says Reid. 'We've got innovations and technology that could be reaching at-risk people right now,' she argues, but the infrastructure is not in place to allow funding to be shifted from treatment to prevention. Scott Arrol, CEO of New Zealand Health IT, says that advances are coming, they're just not arriving as fast as everybody would like.
E. While IT is extremely important to a functioning health system, there are other areas where New Zealand technologies are improving health care. Dr. Hong Sheng Chiong, for example, has adapted a smartphone camera for medical use. The examination kit combines a phone adapter and app, allowing users to examine the eye with minimal training. Another innovation is the Clever MedKit, an intelligent first aid kit. It separates different items like band-aids and ice packs and orders replacements when necessary, making it particularly helpful in today's busy offices. In a separate field, the use of pre-made ceramic fittings which can be placed over a broken tooth in a single sitting reduces the cost of treatment. Dr. Adam Doudney came up with the idea before it was developed by researchers at the technology company Rhondium. Another idea is the Silhouette system, which offers a way to easily monitor wounds. It allows practitioners to detect small differences in wound size by collecting accurate images and data. Finally, the Auckland Bioengineering Institute is helping those wishing to keep fit or rehabilitate from injury. When placed on the body their special sensor moves with the wearer and measures the amount of movement, before the data is transmitted to the user's mobile or tablet. It'll be fascinating to see how these and other technologies transform medicine over the years to come.
The Hazards of Multitasking
Doing more than one thing at once – is it always a good idea?
You arrive at the office, review your todo list and start to feel a headache coming on. You resolve to tackle the items as quickly as possible. While you return calls, you sort email and other letters. You begin keying in slides for tomorrow's presentation. Then your manager comes in wanting an immediate update on sales figures. You have just opened the spreadsheet when a very important customer calls. With the receiver held between your shoulder and your ear, you continue adding up the sales totals until, 15 minutes later, you finally manage, politely, to get rid of the client. You've been multitasking again.
You may believe that anyone who wants to get ahead today should master the art of multitasking. However, a recent study by the Families and Work Institute in New York City has found that 45 per cent of US workers believe that they are asked or expected to work on too many tasks at once. Managers may be surprised to learn that they are actually wasting their workers' time. As it turns out, the human brain cannot really master the computer's art of crunching data in the background while moving between process windows. Instead, a growing number of studies show that trying to juggle jobs rather than completing them sequentially can take longer, and leave workers with a reduced ability to perform each task. In addition, the stress associated with multitasking may contribute to short-term memory difficulties. The combination results in inefficiency, careless thinking and mistakes – not to mention the possible dangers of divided attention for drivers, air traffic controllers, and others who handle machinery.
How can a time management strategy that has become part of the common wisdom actually be so wrong? Exploring that question requires a closer look at an area of consciousness research that examines how the brain focuses attention. One of the modern foundations of current knowledge of multitasking was laid in 1935, when the American psychologist John Ridley Stroop reported that processing information from one task could cause interference with another. Stroop noticed that when study participants were asked to name the colour of a word – such as 'green' – printed in a different colour – red, for example – they experienced difficulty saying the name of the colour. This phenomenon is thought to occur when two tasks get tangled: the brain must suppress one that has been learned so well that it has become automatic (reading), to attend to a second task that requires concentration (naming the colour).
During the past couple of decades, psychologists have probed more deeply into the nature and limitations of multitasking. Psychologist and brain researcher Ernst Pöppel, of the Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich, believes that it is impossible to carry out two or three different tasks simultaneously with the same degree of concentration. He says that seemingly simultaneous awareness and processing of information actually takes place in 'three-second windows'.
In these three-second segments, the brain takes in, as a block, all the data about the environment streaming in from the sensory systems; subsequent events are processed in the next window. So a person can concentrate on a conversation for three seconds, then for three seconds on a crying child, and three seconds on a computer screen. While one subject at a time occupies the foreground of consciousness, the others stay in the background until they, in turn, are given access to the central processor.
Another experiment by psychologist David E Meyer, of the University of Michigan, quantified just how much time we can lose when we shuttle between tasks. The researchers asked test participants to write a report and check their email at the same time. Those individuals who constantly jumped back and forth between the two tasks took about one and a half times as long to finish as those who completed one job before turning to the other. Each switchover from one task to another meant rethinking, and thus involved additional neural resources. In effect, the brain needs time to turn off the rules for one task and to turn on the rules for another. 'Multitasking saves time only when it is a matter of relaxed, routine tasks,' Meyer says. It also takes the brain longer to adapt when switching rapidly back to an interrupted task, rather than waiting longer before switching back.
By its nature multitasking is stressful, and the area in the brain most involved with multitasking is also most affected by the resulting stress. Located behind the forehead, the prefrontal cortex, which neuroscientists call the 'executive' part of the brain, helps us to assess tasks, prioritise them and assign mental resources. It also 'marks' the spot at which a task has been interrupted, so that we can return to it later. This stress can also affect brain cells in another region, the hippocampus, which is important for forming new memories; damage in that area also makes it difficult for a person to acquire new skills.
Psychiatrists Edward Halliwell and John Ratey, of Harvard University, say that multitasking can bring about a brain condition that causes sufferers to constantly seek new information while having difficulties concentrating on its content. All in all, it may be wise to let the email wait while you work on your presentation. You will save time and perform each task better.
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