Waka huia

Waka huia and Papa hou are treasure containers made by Māori - the indigenous people of New Zealand. These treasure containers stored a person's most prized personal possessions, such as hei-tiki (pendants), feathers for decorating and dressing the hair such as the tail feathers of the huia (Heteralocha acutirostris), heru (hair comb) and other items of personal adornment. Waka huia and papa hou were imbued with the tapu (taboo) of their owners because the boxes contained personal items that regularly came into contact with the body, particularly the head (the most tapu part of the body).

Waka huia and papa hou were designed to be suspended from the low hanging ceiling of Māori whare (houses) where their beautifully carved and decorated undersides could be appreciated. They were highly prized in themselves and carefully treasured as they passed between generations. As taonga (treasures), waka huia and papa hou were often gifted between hapu (sub-tribes), whanau (families), and individuals to acknowledge relationships, friendships, and other significant social events. It is common to find waka huia and papa hou of one carving style among a tribe who practice a different style.

Waka

Waka may refer to:

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People with the name

Waka (poetry)

Waka (和歌, literally, "Japanese poem") is a type of poetry in classical Japanese literature. Waka are composed in Japanese, and are contrasted with poetry composed by Japanese poets in Classical Chinese, which are known as kanshi. Although waka in modern Japanese is written as 和歌, in the past it was also written as 倭歌 (see Wa (Japan)), and a variant name is yamato-uta (大和歌).

Etymology

The word waka has two different but related meanings: the original meaning was "poetry in Japanese" and encompassed several genres such as chōka and sedōka (discussed below); the later, more common definition refers to poetry in a 5-7-5-7-7 metre. Up to and during the compilation of the Man'yōshū in the eighth century, the word waka was a general term for poetry composed in Japanese, and included several genres such as tanka (短歌, "short poem"), chōka (長歌, "long poem"), bussokusekika (仏足石歌, "Buddha footprint poem") and sedōka (旋頭歌, "repeating-the-first-part poem"). However, by the time of the Kokinshū's compilation at the beginning of the tenth century, all of these forms except for the tanka and chōka had effectively gone extinct, and chōka had significantly diminished in prominence. As a result, the word waka became effectively synonymous with tanka, and the word tanka fell out of use until it was revived at the end of the nineteenth century (see Tanka).

Roy Fielding

Roy Thomas Fielding (born 1965) is an American computer scientist, one of the principal authors of the HTTP specification, an authority on computer network architecture and co-founder of the Apache HTTP Server project.

In 1999, he was named to the MIT Technology Review TR100 as one of the top 100 innovators in the world under the age of 35. He received a doctorate from the University of California, Irvine in 2000.

Contributions

Architectural Styles and the Design of Network-based Software Architectures, Fielding's doctoral dissertation, describes Representational State Transfer (REST) as a key architectural principle of the World Wide Web, and received a large amount of attention. People now frequently hold up REST as an approach to developing web services, as an alternative to other distributed-computing specifications such as SOAP. Fielding has also been heavily involved in the development of HTML and Uniform Resource Identifiers. Fielding was a co-founder of the Apache HTTP Server project and was a member of the interim OpenSolaris Boards until he resigned from the community in 2008. He was the chair of the Apache Software Foundation for its first three years and was a member of its board of directors until May 2014.

Huia

The huia (Māori: [ˈhʉia]; Heteralocha acutirostris) was the largest species of New Zealand wattlebird, endemic to the North Island of New Zealand. Its extinction in the early 20th century had two primary causes. The first was rampant overhunting to procure huia skins for mounted specimens, which were in worldwide demand by museums and wealthy private collectors. Huia were also hunted to obtain their long, striking tail feathers for locally fashionable hat decorations. The second major cause of extinction was the widespread deforestation of the lowlands of the North Island by European settlers to create pasture for agriculture. Most of these forests were ancient, ecologically complex primary forests, and huia were unable to survive in regenerating secondary forests. The last confirmed sighting of a huia was on 28 December 1907 in the Tararua Ranges. Further credible sightings near Wellington were reported until 1922, and in Te Urewera National Park in the early 1960s.

Huia (plant)

Huia is a genus of extinct vascular plants of the Early Devonian (Pragian or Siegenian, around 410 million years ago). The genus was first described in 1985 based on fossil specimens from the Posongchong Formation, Wenshan district, Yunnan, China.

Description

The sporophyte of H. recurvata consisted of leafless stems (axes), branching both dichotomously and pseudomonopodially (i.e. with unequal divisions creating a 'main stem'). The sporangia (spore-forming organs) were born in terminal spikes on fertile stems, with the sporangia spirally arranged on stalks which curved downwards. The central strand of vascular tissue contained G-type tracheids. It was initially provisionally assigned to the "rhyniophytes". However, this group is defined as having terminal sporangia, whereas those of Huia are lateral, suggesting affinity with the zosterophylls.

A second species, H. gracilis, was described from the Xujiachong Formation (Pragian–early Emsian), Qujing district, Yunnan, China. It differs from H. recurvata in its more slender morphology and its lack of pseudomonopodial branching. The adaxial sporangia, which were oval or elongated oval in shape, split (dehisced) along their length at right angles to the stem. It is suggested that Huia may have originated from early Cooksonia-like plants. Others suggest that its position is uncertain.

Huia (frog)

Huia is a group of true frogs found in Southeast Asia. Many are commonly known as "torrent frogs" after their favorite habitat - small rapid-flowing mountain and hill streams -, but this name is used for many similar-looking frogs regardless of whether they are closely related. A seemingly less ambiguous name is huia frogs; however, the supposed genus seems actually to be a polyphyletic "wastebin taxon" and might contain only a fraction of the dozens of species placed here by some authors.

Several species of Amolops and Odorrana are highly convergent with Huia. O. absita for example is highly similar in habitus to the completely allopatric H. masonii. Though the latter might not be a member of Huia in the strictest sense, it is at least a very close relative.

In another incidence of convergent evolution yielding adaptation to habitat, the tadpoles of Amolops, Huia, Meristogenys as well as Rana sauteri have a raised and usually well-developed sucker on their belly. This is useful in keeping in place in rocky torrents, where these frogs grow up. But as Odorrana and Staurois from comparable habitat prove, this sucker is by no means a necessity and other means of adaptation to torrent habitat exist.