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Bs News November/December

Building Services Engineering

No abstract provided.

Mothers Who Use Illicit Drugs:An Exploration Of Professional Workers’ Perceptions Towards Mothers Who Use Illicit Drugs, Julieann Lane

Dissertations

Although much has been written in recent times about women’s drug use, there has been a scarcity of research into motherhood and drug use in Ireland as it remains both a complex and sensitive issue. Since the 1980’s Ireland has seen a dramatic and unprecedented increase in the availability of illicit drugs. This increased availability reflects rising consumption of illicit drugs amongst women. The aim of this study was to explore the perceptions that a sample of professional workers hold of mothers who use illicit drugs in Ireland. The study reviews the literature applicable to the area of drug use …

Early School Leaving : An Exploration Of The Factors Contributing To School Non-Completion, Jennifer Mcgarr

Dissertations

This study is of an explorative nature, investigating early school leaving in Ireland today. Despite a range of interventions to address school non-completion, approximately 14% of students (as of 2007) continue to leave school without completing their education every year (Byrne & Smyth, 2010). A disproportionate amount of these young people come from disadvantaged backgrounds (Barnardos, 2006). Education is a powerful predicator of life chances and opportunities. Those who leave school with little or no formal education have less opportunities in later life, are more likely to be unemployed, have lower levels of general health and are at a greater …

Bs News September/October

Building Services Engineering

No abstract provided.

Payback: The 1920/1921 Agib Sltu Strike In The Dublin Building Industry, John Hogan

Articles

In late 1920 a strike began in the building industry in Dublin that was to last until June of the following year. It effectively shut down building sites all across the city. The primary protagonists involved in the dispute were the Ancient Guild of Incorporated Brick and Stonelayers Trade Union (AGIBSLTU) and the building employers association, the Dublin Building Trades Employers’ Association (DBTEA). Both of these bodies had fought a bitterly contested lockout 15 years before, which had almost destroyed the union. In 1920, by dint of wider economic circumstances, and a belligerent determination, the union was to have the …

Cloud Computing For Schools, Shane O'Doherty

Dissertations

This project evaluates previous Information and Communication Technology policy and practice relating to primary schools in Ireland with a view to suggesting a better way forward in light of advances in ICT, such as the availability of fast broadband services, including fibre broadband, browser-based applications and the advent of cloud computing. Cloud computing refers to the Internet as a source of both software programs and also data retention, in effect the Internet provides the software and data services via browsers to users who may remain entirely unaware of the technology at work, uncluttered by hardware or software licensing issues or …

Discourse At The Edge: Enterprise Discourse In Ireland, Brendan O'Rourke

Conference papers

Ireland is an economy, society and culture at the edge. It is at the edge of Europe and at the edge of both USA/UK and more mainland European or EU variants of capitalism. More recently it has been at the edge of economic crisis. Yet enterprise discourse is still central in Ireland. Enterprise discourse in Ireland is influenced by global and European Union (EU) developments. However, Irish enterprise discourse is not merely a ‘local adoption’. For example, high Irish economic growth rates during the ‘Celtic Tiger’ period have coincided with the development of the EU’s enterprise policy, thus giving the …

Bs News July/August

Building Services Engineering

No abstract provided.

Deference Under The Separation Of Powers: An Increasingly Acceptable Trait Amongst The Irish Judiciary?, Philip Smith

Dissertations

Deference refers to a certain respect or esteem which is due to a superior or an elder or a tendency of inferiors to acknowledge the legitimacy of superiors’ powers.It is a concept which is becoming increasingly popular in the works of legal commentator’s as of late. This is a direct result of the growing perception that it is a trait which is becoming synonymous with the Irish Judiciary.

The object of this research is to examine whether this accusation is true i.e. have our Superior Courts changed their mindset and adopted a more deferential stance than they used to exhibit. …

Deference Under The Separation Of Powers: An Increasingly Acceptable Trait Amongst The Irish Judiciary?, Philip Smith

Dissertations

Deference refers to a certain respect or esteem which is due to a superior or an elder or a tendency of inferiors to acknowledge the legitimacy of superiors’ powers.It is a concept which is becoming increasingly popular in the works of legal commentator’s as of late. This is a direct result of the growing perception that it is a trait which is becoming synonymous with the Irish Judiciary.

The object of this research is to examine whether this accusation is true i.e. have our Superior Courts changed their mindset and adopted a more deferential stance than they used to exhibit. …

Bs News May/June

Building Services Engineering

No abstract provided.

Supporting Early Childhood Educational Provision Within A Cluster Of Deis Preschool And Primary School Settings With A Specific Focus On Transition Between The Two Educational Settings., Mary O'Kane, Noirin Hayes

Reports

No abstract provided.

Holiday Home, Sweet Home: A Phenomenological Approach To Second Home Living In Ireland, Deirdre N. Quinn

Doctoral

This study constructs a phenomenological account of the second home living experience in Ireland, exploring the interactions between the everyday home life and the holiday home life of the second home owner. It is contextualized by a critical review of the relevant literatures on post-modernism, cosmopolitanism, home and second home living. The thesis utilises a package of participant-centred qualitative methodologies (including in-depth interviews, audio diaries and participants’ photographs) in order to produce a fine-grained insight into their experiences of second home living.

The fieldwork consists of two phases, the first based on in-depth interviews with second home owners and the …

Breaking The Mould 5 : Comparative Simulation Of Internal Insulation Systems, Joseph Little

Articles

In the last edition of Construct Ireland ‘Breaking the Mould IV’ established the standard that should be used to evaluate thermal upgrades of single leaf walls, described steps to physically prepare the wall, explained some of the mechanisms that affect the likelihood of mould and gave criteria for judging the simulations outputs. The next step is to simulate a number of permutations of typical internal insulation systems using WUFI Pro under IS EN 15026.

Building A Successful Transatlantic Collaboration In Engineering/Technological Education; Lessons From A Six Year Journey, Donal Mchale, Mark Mcgrath, John Lawlor

Conference Papers

This paper reflects on key learning’s from the first six-years (2004-2010) of the development of a collaborative journey of two trans-Atlantic higher-educational institutions. It describes the progress towards building a sustainable and innovative international educational partnership in Engineering/Technological education between the Technological University Dublin,DublinIrelandandPurdue University,Indiana,USA.

In particular, the paper provides insight into the iterative stages of development of this relationship. It reflects on some of the key challenges and it recognises the critical enablers of success. It focuses on challenges and solutions in the following six important areas

(i) The partnership initiation stage. Key considerations and important enablers of future …

Bs News March/April

Building Services Engineering

No abstract provided.

Volume 12, 2010, Ellen Hazelkorn, Nora French, Wolfgang Truetzschler

Issues

No abstract provided.

Toast, Vol. 3, Issue 2, 2010, Dit Students Union

DIT Student Union

No abstract provided.

Concurrent Masters Degrees Across The Atlantic: Innovations, Issues And Insights, Michael Dyrenfurth, Mike Murphy, Gary Bertoline, Robert Herrick, Kathryne Newton, Gareth O'Donnell, Donal Mchale, Nuria Castell, Miquel Barcelo, Didac Balas, Maria Ribera Sancho, Jordi Garcia

Conference papers

Atransatlantic degree consortium to implement a four-semester dual masters degree initiative across a three-institution consortium consisting of Purdue University (USA), the Technological University Dublin (DIT), and the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (Spain) is presented in this paper.

War And Rebellion In The Work Of Louis-Ferdinand Céline And Sebastian Barry, Eamon Maher

Books/Chapters

No abstract provided.

Franco-Irish Connections: Essays, Memoirs And Poems In Honour Of Pierre Joannon : Review, Eamon Maher

Articles

The name Pierre Joannon is synonymous with Irish studies and with Franco-Irish relations. I can think of few, if any, people who are more worthy recipients of this beautifully presented Festschrift than the Honorary French Irish Consul, scholar and former President of the Ireland Fund de France. You get some idea of his stature from the list of contributors to this book: two former Taoisigh, Garret FitzGerald and John Bruton, two Nobel Laureates, John Hume and Seamus Heaney, poets Brendan Kennelly and John Montague, a host of historians including Dermot Keogh, Joe Lee, Eunan O’Halpin and Kevin Whelan, distinguished intellectuals …

Economic Crises And The Changing Influence Of The Irish Congress Of Trade Unions On Public Policy, John Hogan

Books/Book Chapters

This chapter examines the dramatic changes in the Irish Congress of Trade Unions’ (ICTU) influence over public policy during the latter half of the twentieth century. The chapter focuses upon the impact economic crises have had on the ICTU’s role in policy-making. The chapter concentrates, in particular, upon four periods, the late 1950s, 1970, the early 1980s and 1987, when the ICTU found its influence over public policy radically transformed. By the late 1950s the trade union movement was invited into the policy-making process by a government desperate to revive a sclerotic economy. During the following decade the ICTU played …

B S News January/February

Building Services Engineering

No abstract provided.

Us Military And Civilian Surge In Afghanistan, Tom Clonan

Articles

US and British casualty figures in Afghanistan experienced a dramatic surge in 2010. A total of 499 US troops and 103 British soldiers were killed by the Taliban last year with thousands more seriously injured by improvised explosive devices (IEDs). The casualty statistics for Afghanistan paint a grim picture of the US-led International Security Assistance Force’s (ISAF) campaign against the Taliban. ISAF’s war in Afghanistan deteriorated significantly in 2007 as the Taliban re-grouped, re-organised and finessed its counter-insurgency strategy against NATO. For example, the number of US and British troops killed in action by the Taliban on an annual basis …

The Discourses Of Higher Education In Ireland: Religion, Nationalism And Economic Development, Nora French

Articles

Higher education is shaped and changed by the context in which it operates. For the past several decades, it has been shaped in Ireland by plans for economic development and the focus has been on education as an enabler of wealth creation. It is claimed to have been an important factor in the rise of the Celtic Tiger economy, and the government are again looking to education as a main contributor to recovery from the current recession. This focus marked a major change in Irish higher education. It was in sharp opposition to the deep-seated tradition of liberal education based …

Instructional Videocasts: Facilitating Learning In A Mobile World, Roisin Donnelly, Robert Hickey

Articles

This paper critically discusses the new opportunities unique to the use of mobile platforms to complement formal learning with informal learning in an apprenticeship context. It begins with an outline of a problem identified by the teacher-researcher with phase six apprentice bricklaying students achieving psycomotor learning outcomes, mainly due to high student numbers and limited available workshop time. A solution to this problem is presented through the facilitation of the students using eleven short instructional video demonstrations on mobile phones to optimise their time. These were uploaded to the memory cards of the students’ mobile phones. Within an action research …

Trends In Performance Of Science And Technology Students (1997–2008) In Ireland, Fiona Faulkner, Olivia Gill, Ailish Hannigan

Articles

Hunt and Lawson [1] displayed the evidence of decline in the mathematical standards of first-year students in Coventry University between 1991 and 1995. Gill [2] sought to investigate if this was also the case in the University of Limerick. The results of diagnostic tests administered to first-year undergraduates in the science and technology groups (service mathematics courses) between 1997 and 2002 displayed the evidence that the mathematical standard of students entering the University of Limerick’s service mathematics courses had declined over the 6 years studied. In this article, the authors revisit the University of Limerick’s database, which currently holds data …

No Longer, But Not Yet: Tweens And The Mediating Of Liminal Selves Through Metaconsumption, Kevina Cody, Katrina Lawlor, Pauline Mcclaren

Articles

Using the anthropological theory of liminality as a lens of analysis, the following paper outlines specific elements of a research project exploring the consumer culture of a liminal group – tweens. The lived experience of a tween is explored using a multi-method approach incorporating personal diaries, in-depth interviews and accompanied shopping trips. Outcomes of one aspect of this longitudinal research project – the theory of metaconsumption - are presented, suggesting an important divergent theoretical path from the ‘effects’ - dominated consumer socialization approach to researching young people and their relationships with consumption. We conclude that those in a shadowed reality, …

Threshold Lives: Exploring The Liminal Consumption Of Tweens, Kevina Cody, Katrina Lawlor, Pauline Maclaren

Articles

The intervening spaces of socio-cultural organisation have proved sources of fascination and powerful theory development in the fields of sociology, psychology and anthropology (e.g. Douglas, 1966; Van Gennep, 1961; Freud, 1950, Foucault, 1977). Consumer culture research has hitherto acknowledged the potency of studying transitional phenomena, spaces and places and the interactions of varied ontologies with the consumption experiences of the individuals or group in flux and evolution (e.g. Davies and Fitchett, 2004; Maldonado and Tansuhaj, 1999; Gentry, 1997; Schouten, 1991). But what of those whose reality is the threshold between two ordered and defined worlds, the centre of nowhere? This …

An Appraisal Of The Optimal Conditions For Successful Technology Transfer To A Low Technology Industry: The Case Of Publicly Funded Food Research In Ireland, Paul O'Reilly, Maeve Henchion

Conference Papers

Operating in an environment characterised by significant economic, political and social change, the requirement for scientific-based innovation is critical for the food industry. The current low level of R&D in the sector, and a growing recognition that companies need to look to knowledge sources outside as well as inside the firm to successfully innovate, brings the need for enhanced leveraging of publicly funded food research into focus. This paper presents the findings of a mixed methods approach. This consists of twenty case studies of completed publicly funded projects, ten of which had achieved technology transfer and ten which had failed …