Digital Commons Network^™

The 2020 General Election : A Gender Analysis, Yvonne Galligan, Fiona Buckley

Articles

The February 2020 general election will be remembered as the “change” election, when the two dominant parties of Irish politics, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, trailed behind Sinn Féin in voters' preferences for the first time. However, for the gender balance of Irish politics, much remained unchanged. While the number of women elected to Dáil Éireann increased by one, this marginal growth since the 2016 general election was deemed a disappointment by analysts and advocates alike. A review of candidacy reveals that Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael lag behind other parties in terms of the proportion of women selected and …

Delivering Gender Justice In Academia Through Gender Equality Plans? Normative And Practical Challenges, Sara Clavero, Yvonne Galligan

Articles

This paper employs the concept of epistemic justice to examine the potential for gender equality plans (GEPs) to bring about sustainable transformative change towardsgender equality in higher education. Mindful of both the limitationsand opportunitiesof gender policy interventions,the paper highlights the importance of approaching gender inequality as a problem of justice and power rather than asan issueof “loss of talent.”The paper drawson Fricker's account of epistemic justice as well ason Bourdieu's analysis of power in the academic field, to evaluate seven GEPs in European universities for their potential to transform gender–power relations in academia.

Finite Element Simulation Of Head Impacts In Mixed Martial Arts, Stephen Tiernan, Aidan Meagher, David O'Sullivan Dr, Eoin O'Kelly Dr

Articles

This study determined brain stress and strain in an unhelmeted sport and correlated this with concussive injuries. Thirteen MMA athletes were fitted with the MiG2.0 Stanford instrumented mouthguard. The mouthguard records linear acceleration and angular velocity in 6 degrees of freedom. Angular acceleration was calculated by differentiation. All events were video recorded, time stamped and reported impacts confirmed. 298 impacts above 10g were recorded during sparring sessions and 153 impacts in competitive events. The competitive events resulted in five concussions which were diagnosed by a medical doctor. The impact with the highest angular acceleration from each sparring session and competitive …

Concussion And The Severity Of Head Impacts In Mixed Martial Arts, Stephen Tiernan, Aidan Meagher, David O'Sullivan, Eoin O'Keefe, Eoin O'Kelly, Eugene Wallace, Colin Doherty, Mathew Campbell, Yuzhe Liu, August Domel

Articles

Background: Concern about the consequences of head impacts in US football motivated researchers to investigate and develop instrumentation to measure the severity of these impacts. However, the severity of head impacts in unhelmeted sports is largely unknown as miniaturised sensor technology has only recently made it possible to measure these impacts in vivo.

Aim: The objective of this study was to measure the linear and angular head accelerations in impacts in mixed martial arts (MMA), and correlate these with concussive injuries.

Methods: Thirteen MMA fighters were fitted with the Stanford instrumented mouthguard (MiG2.0). The mouthguard records linear acceleration and angular …

Opinion-Mining On Marglish And Devanagari Comments Of Youtube Cookery Channels Using Parametric And Non-Parametric Learning Models, Sonali Shah, Abhishek Kaushik, Shubham Sharma, Janice Shah

Articles

No abstract provided.

Opening The Black Box Of Artificial Intelligence For Clinical Decision Support: A Study Predicting Stroke Outcome, Esra Zihni, Vince Istan Madai, Michelle Livne, Ivana Galinovic, Ahmed A. Khalil, Jochen B. Fiebach, Dietmar Frey

Articles

State-of-the-art machine learning (ML) artificial intelligence methods are increasingly leveraged in clinical predictive modeling to provide clinical decision support systems to physicians. Modern ML approaches such as artificial neural networks (ANNs) and tree boosting often perform better than more traditional methods like logistic regression. On the other hand, these modern methods yield a limited understanding of the resulting predictions. However, in the medical domain, understanding of applied models is essential, in particular, when informing clinical decision support. Thus, in recent years, interpretability methods for modern ML methods have emerged to potentially allow explainable predictions paired with high performance. To our …

Expectations Of Artificial Intelligence And The Performativity Of Ethics: Implications For Communication Governance, Aphra Kerr, Marguerite Barry, John D. Kelleher

Articles

This article draws on the sociology of expectations to examine the construction of expectations of ‘ethical AI’ and considers the implications of these expectations for communication governance. We first analyse a range of public documents to identify the key actors, mechanisms and issues which structure societal expectations around artificial intelligence (AI) and an emerging discourse on ethics. We then explore expectations of AI and ethics through a survey of members of the public. Finally, we discuss the implications of our findings for the role of AI in communication gover- nance. We find that, despite societal expectations that we can design …

Finding Common Ground For Citizen Empowerment In The Smart City, John D. Kelleher, Aphra Kerr

Articles

Corporate smart city initiatives are just one example of the contemporary culture of surveillance. They rely on extensive information gathering systems and Big Data analysis to predict citizen behaviour and optimise city services. In this paper we argue that many smart city and social media technologies result in a paradox whereby digital inclusion for the purposes of service provision also results in marginalisation and disempowerment of citizens. Drawing upon insights garnered from a digital inclusion workshop conducted in the Galapagos islands, we propose that critically and creatively unpacking the computational techniques embedded in data services is needed as a first …

Festivals, Public Space And Cultural Inclusion : Public Policy Insights, Bernadette Quinn, Alba Colombo, Kristina Lindström, David Mcgillivray, Andrew Smith

Articles

This paper investigates if and how cities conceive of festivals staged in outdoor public space as a means of achieving cultural inclusion policy objectives. The inclusion of culture in the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) creates an imperative for cities to scrutinize their approaches to making their cities inclusive. Festivals offer potential in this regard and this study examines the ways that Barcelona, Dublin, Glasgow, Gothenburg and London incorporate festivals into cultural inclusion policies. It relies on secondary research to critically analyse a range of current policy documents, informed by Ball’s ideas about policy contexts: (a) of influence, (b) of …

Leading Through Collaboration: A Tribute To Distinguished Professor Barbara Cosens, Donald L. Burnett Jr.

Articles

No abstract provided.

The Wild Atlantic Way: A Tourism Journey, Kevin A. Griffin, Gerard Dunne

Articles

The Wild Atlantic Way is possibly the most celebrated, high profile tourism initiative to be launched in Ireland in recent years. It consists of a defined touring route along the western seaboard, one of the most scenic, remote, and sensitive stretches of Irish landscape. This paper presents the principal findings from a survey of 341 tourism and hospitality product providers along the Wild Atlantic Way. The main aim of the research was to investigate the perceived impacts (economic, environmental, and socio-cultural) of this new tourism initiative on the local areas through which it passes. The results paint a generally positive …

Gender-Related Differences In Flood Risk Perception And Behaviours Among Private Groundwater Users In The Republic Of Ireland, Cillian P. Mcdowell, Luisa Andrade, Eoin O'Neill, Kevin O'Malley, Jean O'Dwyer, Paul Hynds

Articles

Extreme weather events including flooding can have severe personal, infrastructural, and economic consequences, with recent evidence pointing to surface flooding as a pathway for the microbial contamination of private groundwater supplies. There is a pressing need for increasingly focused information and awareness campaigns to highlight the risks posed by extreme weather events and appropriate subsequent post-event actions. To date, little is known about the presence, directionality or magnitude of gender-related differences regarding flood risk awareness and behaviour among private groundwater users, a particularly susceptible sub-population due to an overarching paucity of infrastructural regulation across many regions. The current study investigated …

Indigenous Rights And Climate Change: The Influence Of Climate Change On The Quantification Of Reserved Instream Water Rights For American Indian Tribes, Dylan R. Hedden-Nicely

Articles

The people indigenous to the Western portion of the lands now referred to as North America have relied on aquatic species for physical, cultural, and spiritual sustenance for millennia. Such indigenous peoples, referred to in the American legal system as Indian tribes, are entitled to water rights for fish habitat pursuant to the Winters Doctrine, which holds that the federal government impliedly reserved water rights for tribes when reservations were created. Recently, the methodology for quantifying these rights has been the Instream Flow Incremental Methodology (IFIM) and/or one of its major components, the Physical Habitat Simulation Model (PHABSIM). These models …

Leading Through Collaboration: A Tribute To Distinguished Professor Barbara Cosens, Dylan R. Hedden-Nicely

Articles

No abstract provided.

Innovation In A Legal Vacuum: The Uncertain Legal Landscape For Shared Micro-Mobility, David Pimentel

Articles

The last few years have seen an explosion in the number and size shared of micro-mobility systems (“SMMS”) across the United States. Some of these systems have seen extraordinary success and the potential benefit of these systems to communities is considerable. However, SMMS have repeatedly ran into legal barriers that either prevent their implementation entirely, confuse and dissuade potential users, or otherwise limit SMMS’s potential positive impact. This paper reflects a detailed study of state laws relating to SMMS and the platforms commonly used in these systems. The study uncovered many inconsistencies with micro-mobility laws across the country. Currently, many …

Distancing Refugees, Geoffrey Heeren

Articles

Today, two systems exist for addressing the humanitarian claims of persons fleeing persecution. One system consists of refugees living in host countries, often in large camps, who ideally are then resettled in other countries or repatriated when it is safe to do so. The other system involves refugees arriving in a country and seeking asylum-a right with ancient religious roots. The first "encampment model" is fundamentally broken, as most refugees are housed in the developing or least developed world in terrible conditions for extended periods of time, with little or no realistic hope of resettlement elsewhere or repatriation. The developed …

The Use Of Small-Sided Games As An Aerobic Fitness Assessment Supplement Within Elite Level Professional Soccer, Adam Lee Owen, Matthew Newton, Aidan Shovlin, Shane Malone

Articles

The purpose of this investigation was to quantify the association between 5 vs. 5 small sided games (SSG) running performance and physiological performance during the Yo-YoIR1 test to ascertain the utility of SSGs as a potential fitness test modality within elite professional soccer players. Twenty-three (n = 23) elite male professional soccer players (mean ± SD age 25.3 ± 3.1 yrs, mass: 76 ± 9 kg, height: 176 ± 9 cm) were assessed. Players completed an intermittent aerobic fitness test (Yo-YoIR1) and a 5 vs. 5 SSGs protocol for the purpose of the study. During all SSGs players wore GPS …

A Brief History Of Whiskey Adulteration And The Role Of Spectroscopy Combined With Chemometrics In The Detection Of Modern Whiskey Fraud, Mary Deasy, Aoife C. Power, Sinead Currivan, Sive Geoghegan, Daniel Cozzolino

Articles

Food fraud and adulteration is a major concern in terms of economic and public health. Multivariate methods combined with spectroscopic techniques have shown promise as novel an analytical strategy for addressing issues related to food fraud that cannot be solved by the analysis of one variable, particularly in complex matrices such distilled beverages. This review describes and discusses different aspects of whisky production, and recent developments of laboratory, in field and high throughput analysis. In particular, recent applications detailing the use of vibrational spectroscopy techniques combined with data analytical methods used to distinguish between brand and origin of whisky to …

Evaluation Of An Ag85b Immunosensor With Potential For Electrochemical Mycobacterium Tuberculosis Diagnostics, Brian Murphy, Eithne Dempsey

Articles

Tuberculosis remains a major global health concern, especially in the developing world, and monitoring/early detection of the disease relies on low cost technologies that provide rapid and accurate results. Mycobacterium tuberculosis is the responsible bacterial pathogen and it is currently estimated by the World Health Organisation (WHO), that one quarter of the world’s population, mainly in the developing world, is infected with TB. The overall aim of this work was to advance a screening electrochemical sensor for label free detection of Ag85B, a member of the Antigen 85 complex - major secretary protein of M. Tuberculosisand biomarker for disease. An …

Structural Features Of 1,3,4-Thiadiazole-Derived Ligands And Their Zn(Ii) And Cu(Ii) Complexes Which Demonstrate Synergistic Antibacterial Effects With Kanamycin, Dariusz Karcz, Arkadiusz Matwijczuk, Daniel Kaminski, Bernadette Creaven, Katarzyna Lecka-Szlachta, Karolina Starzak

Articles

Classical synthetic protocols were applied for the isolation of three novel 1,3,4-thiadiazole derivatives which were then complexed with the biologically important Cu(II) and Zn(II) ions. All free ligands and their corresponding complexes were characterized using a number of spectroscopic techniques including Ultraviolet-visible (UV–vis), Fluorescence, Infrared (FT-IR), tandem liquid chromatography-mass (LC-MS), X-ray diffraction (XRD), and Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) spectroscopy (¹H, ¹³C, HSQC, HMBC). The results obtained are consistent with the formation of dihydrate complexes, in which the chelation of the metal ion occurs via one of the thiadiazole nitrogen atoms and the deprotonated hydroxyl group of the …

Irish Construction Cross Border Trade And Brexit: Practitioner Perceptions On The Periphery Of Europe, Tara Brooks, Lloyd Scott, John P. Spillane, Katy Hayward

Articles

The United Kingdom (UK) Brexit vote of June 2016 has created unprecedented uncertainty in the construction industry in Ireland but little research to date has been undertaken on existing construction trading patterns and the potential effects of regulatory divergence and other nontariff barriers in Ireland in this context. In response, this study uses mixed methods to fill this gap in knowledge. The experience of nine construction industry interviewees is probed – five based in Northern Ireland (in the UK) and four from Ireland, which will remain in the EU after the UK leaves. The researchers’ analysis of the qualitative data …

Advancement Of Predictive Modeling Of Zeta Potentials (Ζ) In Metal Oxide Nanoparticles With Correlation Intensity Index (Cii), Andrey A. Toropov, Natalia Sizochenko, Alla P. Toropova, Danuta Leszczynska, Jerzy Leszczynski

Articles

It was expected that index of the ideality of correlation (IIC) and correlation intensity index (CII) could be used as possible tools to improve the predictive power of the quantitative model for zeta potential of nanoparticles. In this paper, we test how the statistical quality of quantitative structure-activity models for zeta potentials (ζ, a common measurement that reflects surface charge and stability of nanomaterial) could be improved with the use of these two indexes. Our hypothesis was tested using the benchmark data set that consists of 87 measurements of zeta potentials in water. We used quasi-SMILES molecular representation to take …

Monitoring The Biochemical Changes Occuring To Human Keratinocytes Exposed To Solar Radiation By Raman Spectroscopy, Ulises Lopez-Gonzalez, Alan Casey, Hugh Byrne

Articles

Solar radiation exposure is recognised to be a significant contributor to the development of skin cancer. Monitoring the simultaneous and consecutive mechanisms of interaction could provide a greater understanding of the process of photocarcinogenesis. This work presents an analysis of the biochemical and morphological changes occurring to immortalised human epithelial keratinocyte (HaCaT) cell cultures exposed to simulated solar radiation (SSR). Cell viability was monitored with the aid of the Alamar Blue assay, morphological examination was done with haematoxylin and eosin staining (H&E) and changes to the biochemical constituents (nucleic acids and proteins) as a result of the radiation insult were …

In Vitro Label Free Raman Microspectroscopic Analysis To Monitor The Uptake, Fate And Impacts Of Nanoparticle Based Materials, Hugh Byrne, Franck Bonnier, Esen Efeoglu, Caroline Moore, Jennifer Mcintyre

Articles

The continued emergence of nanoscale materials for nanoparticle-based therapy, sensing and imaging, as well as their more general adoption in a broad range of industrial applications, has placed increasing demands on the ability to assess their interactions and impacts at a cellular and subcellular level, both in terms of potentially beneficial and detrimental effects. Notably, however, many such materials have been shown to interfere with conventional in vitro cellular assays that record only a single colorimetric endpoint, challenging the ability to rapidly screen cytological responses. As an alternative, Raman microspectroscopy can spatially profile the biochemical content of cells, and any …

The Impact Of Body Mass Index On Functional Rehabilitation Outcomes Of Working-Age Inpatients With Stroke, Alejandro Garcia-Rudolph, John D. Kelleher, Blanca Cegarra, Joan Sauri Ruiz, Vasudevan Nedumpozhimana, Eloy Opissso, Jose M. Tormos, Montserrat Bernabeu

Articles

BACKGROUND: Stroke is the most relevant cause of acquired persistent disability in adulthood. The relationship between patient’s weight during rehabilitation and stroke functional outcome is controversial, previous research reported positive, negative and no effects, with scarce studies specifically addressing working-age patients.
AIM: To evaluate the association between Body Mass Index (BMI) and the functional progress of adult (<65 >years) patients with stroke admitted to a rehabilitation hospital.
DESIGN: Retrospective observational cohort study.
SETTING: Inpatient rehabilitation center.
POPULATION: 178 stroke patients (ischemic or hemorrhagic).
METHODS: Point-biserial and Spearman’s correlations, multivariate linear regressions and analysis of covariance were used to describe differences …

Sport In The Face Of The Covid-19 Pandemic: Towards An Agenda For Research In The Sociology Of Sport, Adam B. Evans, Joanna Blackwell, Paddy Dolan, Josef Fahlén, Remco Hoekma, Verena Lenneis, Gareth Mcnarry

Articles

These are extraordinary times. Less because we are currently in the midst of a global pandemic; humanity has been here multiple times in the past, sometimes with even more devastating results (the ‘Black Death’ of 1346–1353, or Cocolitzli Epidemics in the 16th Century, for example). Rather, these are extraordinary times due to both the huge shutting down of industry, travel and borders, and the enormous level of coverage and discussion of the crisis through both traditional and social media formats (Stevens & Prins, 2020). Moreover, global, regional and national comparisons and discussions have become commonplace with regards to everything …

Zealous Administration: The Deportation Bureaucracy, Geoffrey Heeren

Articles

An agency's culture shapes its lawmaking. Under certain conditions, agency culture dominates decision-making so strongly that it mutes the influence of those factors that administrative law scholars have traditionally focused on including presidential will, judicial oversight, internal resistance, and public opinion. We call this undertheorized phenomenon "zealous administration." The immigration enforcement bureaucracy has vast discretion to remove unauthorized immigrants from the United States. Current immigration policies-such as indiscriminate deportation, family separation, and harsh detention-represent the most prominent example of zealous administration in the federal government. This Article focuses on that bureaucracy to plumb the causes and effects of zealous administration …

Religious Liberty In A Pandemic, Caroline Mala Corbin

Articles

The coronavirus pandemic caused an unprecedented shutdown of the United States. The stay-at-home orders issued by most states typically banned large gatherings of any kind, including religious services. Churches sued, arguing that these bans violated their religious liberty rights by treating worship services more strictly than analogous activities that were not banned, such as shopping at a liquor store or superstore. This Essay examines these claims, concluding that the constitutionality of the bans turns on the science of how the pathogen spreads, and that the best available scientific evidence supports the mass gathering bans.

Expungement Of Criminal Convictions: An Empirical Study, J.J. Prescott, Sonja B. Starr

Articles

Laws permitting the expungement of criminal convictions are a key component of modern criminal justice reform efforts and have been the subject of a recent upsurge in legislative activity. This debate has been almost entirely devoid of evidence about the laws’ effects, in part because the necessary data (such as sealed records themselves) have been unavailable. We were able to obtain access to de-identified data that overcome that problem, and we use it to carry out a comprehensive statewide study of expungement recipients and comparable nonrecipients in Michigan. We offer three key sets of empirical findings. First, among those legally …

The Machinery Of International Law And Democratic Backsliding: The Problem Of Term Limits, Tom Ginsburg

Articles

Utilizing a comprehensive panel dataset spanning from 1900 to 2020, this study introduces an innovative methodology for the analysis and categorization of legal documents, specifically national constitutions. Contrary to the predominant reliance on unsupervised methods within the field, this research incorporates a supervised machine-learning approach, notably the SEMMS method, alongside traditional unsupervised algorithms. This dual approach facilitates a nuanced analysis of the human rights provisions contained within national constitutions, resulting in the identification of both traditional and novel constitutional groupings. Broadly speaking, the more traditional common law-civil law divide does not seem particularly relevant in this context. Furthermore, our methodology …