Digital Commons Network^™

A W-Shaped Convolutional Network For Robust Crop And Weed Classification In Agriculture, Syed Imran Moazzam, Tahir Nawaz, Waqar Shahid Qureshi, Umar Shahbaz Khan, Mohsin Islam Tiwan

Articles

Agricultural image and vision computing are significantly different from other object classification-based methods because two base classes in agriculture, crops and weeds, have many common traits. Efficient crop, weeds, and soil classification are required to perform autonomous (spraying, harvesting, etc.) activities in agricultural fields. In a three-class (crop-weed-background) agricultural classification scenario, it is usually easier to accurately classify the background class than the crop and weed classes because the background class appears significantly different feature-wise than the crop and weed classes. However, robustly distinguishing between the crop and weed classes is challenging because their appearance features generally look very similar. …

The Profess 12 Summer School Student Handbook, Una Beagon, Margaret Morgan, Ruchita Jani, Rosalind M Henry, Janet Mckennedy, Brian Bowe

Reports

This document forms part of the PROFESS 12 Summer School Toolkit for engineering educators as a component of Work Package 3 in the HEA funded PROFESS 12 (PROFessional skills for Engineering students - Summer School to achieve SDG 12) Project.

This handbook has been prepared for students engaging in the week long school to let them know what to expect including the schedule of events for the summer school. It also sets out what is expected of the students both in terms of pre-reading and also engagement and behaviour during the week.

Building Services Engineering May/June 2023

Building Services Engineering

No abstract provided.

Novel Block Grid Analysis (Bga) Based Algorithm For Use In Determining Coefficients Of Similarities Between Uv Fluorescent Spectra, Kevin N. Mellon Dr, Noel Carey Mr

Articles

This paper presents a novel computational process used for determining matching coefficients for optical spectra either in real time or from a database. This simple algorithmic method is capable of outputting a set of coefficients relating to comparative matching datapoints and to a weighted similarity ratio between spectra whilst still maintaining high computational efficiency due to the minimization of floating-point calculations. The process works as effectively on signal data during real time processing or on images of spectra which may be stored in a database. A subset of the algorithm has already been used very effectively in an embedded mobile …

A Natural Biomaterial Scaffold For Heart Valve Tissue Engineering, Claire Brougham

Research Outputs: 2025-Present

Statement of Purpose: Tissue-engineered heart valves (TEHVs) have the potential to fuse with the native tissue and facilitate growth and remodelling; however, this is dependent on having a suitable scaffold material that can undergo the mechanical strain experienced during the cardiac cycle. Fibrin and collagen show particular promise as TEHV scaffolds due to their biocompatibility. Although weak mechanical properties have limited their use to date, crosslinking treatments can be used to increase the mechanical properties of these collagen-based biomaterials by forming bonds between collagen molecules. Common crosslinking treatments for collagen-glycosaminoglycan (CG) scaffolds include dehydrothermal (DHT) and 1-ethyl-3-(3-dimethyl aminopropyl) carbodiimide (EDAC). …

Dexesesc: Development And Expansion Of Existing Services Associated With The European Student Card, Eut+ Sofia Week, 18-10 January, 2023, Lubomir Dimitrov (Ed), Rossen Radonov (Ed), Janina Fengel (Ed), Antonio Javier Martinez Vallo (Ed), Serban Meza (Ed), Denitza Zgureva (Tech. Ed.), Kalin Filipov (Tech.Ed)

Conference Proceedings

THE EUROPEAN STUDENT CARD INITIATIVE An initiative to help students and higher education institutions on Erasmus+ exchanges by simplifying administrative processes and enhancing digitalisation. It is also crucial to promoting student participation in educational and cultural activities in line with the vision to create a European Education Area by 2025.

Housing In Kibera's Soweto East Informal Settlement, Kenya: A Socio-Technical Evaluation, Tiernan Brennan

Masters

In 2003, the Kenya Slum Upgrading Programme (KENSUP) was launched in partnership with UN-Habitat and the Government of Kenya (GoK) to improve the livelihoods of people in Kenya by 2020 through the provision of improved shelter, infrastructure, land tenure and income generation. Kibera is an informal settlement in Kenya where varying housing typologies and traditional vernacular-style designs coexist with modern housing units. Soweto East was one of eighteen villages located in Kibera selected for KENSUP’s first major housing development initiative. Soweto East was selected from a screening of several housing projects that could be subjected to a socio-technical (STE). The …

Pvpbc: Privacy- And Verifiability-Preserving E-Voting Based On Permissioned Blockchain, Muntadher Sallal, Ruairí De Fréin, Ali Malik

Articles

Privacy and verifiability are crucial security requirements in e-voting systems and combining them is considered to be a challenge given that they seem to be contradictory. On one hand, privacy means that cast votes cannot be traced to the corresponding voters. On the other hand, linkability of voters and their votes is a requirement of verifiability which has the consequence that a voter is able to check their vote in the election result. These two contradictory features can be addressed by adopting privacy-preserving cryptographic primitives, which at the same time as achieving privacy, achieve verifiability. Many end-to-end schemes that support …

‘It Is The Journey Not The Finish Line’: Predictors Of Grit In The Way Of St. James Pilgrimage, Ana Rita Nunes, Pedro Rosário, José Carlos Núñez, Armanda Pereira, Tânia Moreira, Cleia Zanatta

International Journal of Religious Tourism and Pilgrimage

Few studies have explored how individuals can develop perseverance and passion towards longterm goals. This study addresses this research topic. Predictors of grit were tested while participants progressed on the Way of St. James, a long walk completed by foot or bicycle, taking several days or weeks, to Santiago de Compostela (Spain). 575 pilgrims of various nationalities self-reported measures of grit, harmonious passion, autonomous functioning, and lifelong learning attitudes. To study the association between these variables, path analysis modelling was conducted. The results show that autonomous pilgrims demonstrate more perseverance and passion towards their long-term goals than less autonomous pilgrims. …

Close Mapping Of St. Olav’S Pilgrimage Path Through Gudbrandsdal Norway: Probabilities Of A Designed, Land Surveyed Concept Of A Large-Scale Christianised Landscape, Dennis Doxtater

International Journal of Religious Tourism and Pilgrimage

This exercise in Norway ‘close-maps’ accurate, existing geometries between thirty-two latitude / longitude points of mostly medieval churches and other sites on the major pilgrimage path through Gudbrandsdal to Trondheimsfjord where the martyr St.Olav was venerated. Site data and basic path routes are taken from the Pilegrimsleden website, popular today with religious or recreational tourists. The inclusion of the largest prehistoric monumental mound in Scandinavia as an important early stop on the pilgrimage provides the first clue to the eventual mapping of a large-scale ‘system’ of land surveyed patterns. This symbolic anchor in the south, is connected to likely ancient …

Technological University Dublin's Pathway To Embedding Sustainability In Food Degrees, Nemos And Beyond, Julie Dunne, Catherine Barry-Ryan, Cormac Mcmahon

Presentations

The School of Food Science and Environmental Health, Technological University Dublin, commenced a journey to embed Sustainability in its modules and programmes in 2020 with a nationally funded project ‘Sustainable Food Curriculum Co-Create’. The project’s goal was to build capacity for integrating sustainability learning outcomes across Food programmes through educator professional development and co-creation with students. The CPD curriculum design involved several stakeholders in Education for Sustainable Development from across the Food System including enterprise and state organisations who advised on sector-specific sustainability issues, food experts from across several Schools, and sustainability experts from across the University and beyond. It …

An Evaluation Of A Computational Technique For Measuring The Embeddedness Of Sustainability In The Curriculum Aligned To Aashe-Stars And The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, Philippe Lemarchand, Cormac H. Macmahon Dr, Mick Mckeever, Philip Owende

Articles

Introduction: SDG 4.7 mandates university contributions to the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) through their education provisions. Hence, universities increasingly assess their curricular alignment to the SDGs. A common approach to the assessment is to identify keywords associated with specific SDGs and to analyze for their presence in the curriculum. An inherent challenge is associating the identified keywords as used in the diverse set of curricular contexts to relevant sustainability indicators; hence, the urgent need for more systematic assessment as SDG implementation passes its mid-cycle.

Method: In this study, a more nuanced technique was evaluated with notable capabilities …

What Is The Entrepreneurship Process For Communication Design Enterprises?, Con Kennedy

Doctoral

The literature indicated that entrepreneurship plays a crucial role in economic development and that understanding what entrepreneurship is has changed with the development of society and entrepreneurship theory (Murphy et al., 2006). However, there is an identified skills deficit in understanding entrepreneurship in the communication design sector (Design Enterprise Skillnet, 2021; Department of Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, 2016; Intertrade Ireland, 2009; Design Council, 2007; Enterprise Ireland, 1999). Nevertheless, within each of these studies, the deficit has not been addressed, nor is the entrepreneurship process for communication design enterprises established. The literature on entrepreneurship generally ignores entrepreneurship in the design sector, …

Building Services Engineering March/April 2023

Building Services Engineering

No abstract provided.

Analog Holographic Wavefront Sensor For Defocus And Spherical Aberration Measurement Recorded In A Photopolymer, Emma Branigan, Suzanne Martin, Matthew Sheehan, Kevin Murphy

Articles

An analog holographic wavefront sensor (AHWFS), for measurement of low and high order (defocus and spherical aberration) aberration modes has been developed as volume phase holograms in a photopolymer recording medium. This is the first time that high order aberrations such as spherical aberration can be sensed using a volume hologram in a photosensitive medium. Both defocus and spherical aberration were recorded in a multi-mode version of this AHWFS. Refractive elements were used to generate a maximum and minimum phase delay of each aberration which were multiplexed as a set of volume phase holograms in an acrylamide based-photopolymer layer. The …

Author Gender Identification Considering Gender Bias, Manuela N. Jeyaraj, Sarah Jane Delany

Conference papers

Writing style and choice of words used in textual content can vary between men and women both in terms of who the text is talking about and who is writing the text. The focus of this paper is on author gender prediction, identifying the gender of who is writing the text. We compare closed and open vocabulary approaches on different types of textual content including more traditional writing styles such as in books, and more recent writing styles used in user generated content on digital platforms such as blogs and social media messaging. As supervised machine learning approaches can reflect …

Cognitive Software Defined Networking And Network Function Virtualization And Applications, Sachin Sharma, Avishek Nag

Articles

The emergence of Software-Defined Networking (SDN) and Network Function Virtualization (NFV) has revolutionized the Internet. Using SDN, network devices can be controlled from a centralized, programmable control plane that is decoupled from their data plane, whereas with NFV, network functions (such as network address translation, firewall, and intrusion detection) can be virtualized instead of being implemented on proprietary hardware. In addition, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) techniques will be key to automating network operations and enhancing customer service. Many of the challenges behind SDN and NFV are currently being investigated in several projects all over the world using …

Nanoclays‑Containing Bio‑Based Packaging Materials: Properties, Applications, Safety, And Regulatory Issues, Kalpani Y. Perera, Maille Hopkins, Amit K. Jaiswal Dr, Swarna Jaiswal

Articles

Food packaging is an important concept for consumer satisfaction and the increased shelf life of food products. The introduction of novel food packaging materials has become an emerging trend in recent years, which could be mainly due to environmental pollution caused by plastic packaging and to reduce food waste. Recently, numerous studies have been carried out on nanoclays or nanolayered silicate to be used in packaging material development as reinforcing filler composites. Different types of nanoclays have been used as food packaging materials, while montmorillonite (MMT), halloysite, bentonite (BT), Cloisite, and organically modified nanoclays have become of great interest. The …

Fair4pghd: A Framework For Fair Implementation Over Pghd, Abdullahi Abubakar Kawu, Dympna O'Sullivan, Lucy Hederman, Mirjam Van Reisen

Articles

Patient Generated Health Data (PGHD) are being considered for integration with health facilities, however little is known about how such data can be made machine-actionable in a way that meets FAIR guidelines. This article proposes a 5-stage framework that can be used to achieve this.

Supporting Compliance Of Occupational Safety And Health Requirements - European Labour Inspection Systems Of Sanctions And Standardised Measures, Victor Hrymak

Articles

European legislation for occupational safety and health (OSH) is based on the prevention of accidents and ill health. Apart from European directives, all Member States have national laws and strategies and expect enterprises to implement this preventative ethos, and thereby ensure adequate performance in OSH. Labour Inspectorates monitor and if necessary enforce these laws by deploying individual Labour Inspectors to chosen enterprises. If workplace safety and health conditions are found to be substandard, Labour Inspectors are expected to improve the situation using persuasion and, if necessary, their authority to compel enterprises through specific sanction powers. Bruhn (2009) describes this interaction …

Employment, Remuneration And Workplace Report 2023, Roisin Murphy Dr

Reports

This report follows the previously published “Employment Opportunities and Future Skills Requirements for Surveying Professionals, 2018-2021” in which a significant shortage of property, land and construction professionals was projected. The current research has been undertaken against a backdrop of economic uncertainty due largely to Brexit, Covid-19 and the war in Ukraine.

The Irish economy rebounded well following the Covid-19 pandemic with low unemployment, moderate economic growth and solid Exchequer balances forecast in the medium term. On the downside, price inflation, fueled by soaring energy costs, have resulted in interest rates rising for the first time in over a decade which …

Editorial: Green Chemistry Biocatalysis, Barry J. Ryan, Gary T. Henehan, Bekir E. Eser, Ning Li, Zheng Guo, Gemma K. Kinsella

Articles

Editorial on the Research Topic: Green chemistry biocatalysis

A Multiple Association-Based Unsupervised Feature Selection Algorithm For Mixed Data Sets, Ayman Taha, Ali S. Hadi, Bernard Cosgrave, Susan Mckeever

Articles

Companies have an increasing access to very large datasets within their domain. Analysing these datasets often requires the application of feature selection techniques in order to reduce the dimensionality of the data and prioritise features for downstream knowledge generation tasks. Effective feature selection is a key part of clustering, regression and classification. It presents a myriad of opportunities to improve the machine learning pipeline: eliminating redundant and irrelevant features, reducing model over-fitting, faster model training times and more explainable models. By contrast, and despite the widespread availability and use of categorical data in practice, feature selection for categorical and/or mixed …

Dlr Covid-19 Mobility Review (Phase 2a): Report On Cmr Economic Development & Business Community Feedback, Sarah Rock Dr., Robert Bradshaw Dr., David O'Connor, Odran Reid

Reports

This research reports on the findings from an area focused economic development and business community focused study of the Costal Mobility Route (CMR), which is intended to complement and extend research previously conducted in Phase 1 of Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council’s (DLR’s) ‘Covid-19 Mobility & Public Realm Works’ project. This study is based on participant interviews, and is limited to businesses located directly along the CMR, as well as a number of business groups representing a wider area and a Local Enterprise Office.

While one company reported a significant decline in revenue that they attribute to the CMR, the remainder …

Special Issue - Reflection, Fiona Malone, Cormac Hugh Macmahon

Irish Journal of Academic Practice

In reading the papers in this edition of IJAP, these closing reflections outline the case for transformation in accounting, economics, and finance education. Indeed, as subsets of business education, there is strong evidence that all three disciplines (and their respective professional practices) have significant and specific roles to play in climate action, restoring nature and tackling inequality in the coming decades. Whilst big business suffered a crisis of legitimacy in the wake of the global financial crisis, its remarkably positive response and that of its educators to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development has helped to restore credibility.

When we …

The Infrastructure Metaverse Already Exists, Ankur Mitra, Ahmed Hassan, Mark Mulville

Articles

The construction industry is currently undergoing a profound digital transformation, primarily driven by the innovative concept of digital twins. The United Kingdom's National Digital Twin Programme (NDTp) stands as a visionary initiative striving to establish a cohesive digital ecosystem wherein all forms of infrastructure, both existing and newly constructed, are replicated in the digital realm. Digital twins are not merely static visual representations; they serve as the cornerstone for a comprehensive information management framework that enables real-time data sharing. This data-sharing capability spans the entire lifecycle of construction projects. What makes this technology particularly powerful is its capacity to facilitate …

Annals Of Athy 2021 Locals Curating Their Own Lived Heritage, Anne Murphy

Level 3

The Annals is a 273-page book printed by DataPrint Athy containing ten parts authored by locals and edited by Anne Murphy, Mark Wall and Clement Roche. The three main themes of the Annals relate to industrial heritage, agricultural heritage and sporting heritage. Additional parts are allocated to significant local personalities including J. J. Bergin, Juan Greene, John Wortley, Annamay McHugh and the Bramley family. One part considers a plan to grow flax locally to produce sailcloth for the English navy in its fight against Napoleon! The final part lists the residents of the main streets in 1916 and 2016.

Authentic Assessment And Embedding Sustainable Literacy And Technology Skills In Tourism Education., Jennifer Stewart, Catherine Gorman

Irish Journal of Academic Practice

John Tribe proposed a model for ethical tourism which ‘utilises the Aristotelian idea of actions guided by practical wisdom, and that can contribute to curriculum, which participates in ‘tourism world-making' (Tribe, 2002, p323). Considering the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the integration of sustainability literacy into tourism education becomes essential for nurturing graduates capable of sustainable practices. This case study, employing a virtual fieldtrip (VFT) with authentic assessment, examines the integration of sustainability literacy and technology skills. Whilst technology enhances engagement, its role in the VFT does not surpass traditional methods. Integrated assessment and a multi-stakeholder approach make learning comprehensive. Yet, …

Fostering Student Engagement With The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals Using An Escape Room, Sarah L. Rawe, Eoin J. Mcgillicuddy, Sean D. Mcdermott, Mehael Fennelly, Patrice Behan

Irish Journal of Academic Practice

This paper describes the use of gamification, in the form of an interactive puzzle-based escape room, as an innovative and cross-curricular approach to introducing the United Nation (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in higher education. Educational games encourage active and collaborative learning while both engaging and challenging learners. Here, we describe how sustainability literacy was incorporated into undergraduate chemistry programmes in the form of a puzzle-based game, known as an Escape Room. A printable escape room was developed for use in any face-to-face or virtual classroom. The escape room consists of a narrative, or storyline that leads players (students …

Teach As You Preach: Teacher Training For Stem-Educators At Dtu, Pernille Rattleff, Ditte Strunge Sass

Practice Papers

At technical universities today, we are training students for jobs that do not yet exist, to use technologies that have not been invented, to solve problems, we do not even know are problems yet. To succeed, we must create sustainable learning processes allowing our students to construct proper conceptual understanding and be able to retrieve, transfer, and apply knowledge, skills, and competences in new complex settings. To facilitate such learning processes, higher education institutions must train excellent teachers. This paper presents the framework for STEM teacher training at DTU – Technical University of Denmark. A framework that claims exactly to …