Digital Commons Network^™

Speech And Language Therapy Service Evaluation Policy Brief, Noirin Hayes, Siobhán Keegan, Eimer Goulding

Reports

Based in Tallaght West, CDI is the result of the professionalism, passion, and persistence of a group of 23 concerned individuals and organisations living and working in the community who had a vision of a better place for children. Through innovation partnerships, they brought together an approach which drew on both the science and the spirit of best practice in order to meet the identified needs of children and families. A partnership was agreed between the Government and The Atlantic Philanthropies, and the consortium's first piece of work was a needs analysis entitled How are our Kids (CDI, 2004). A …

Emergent Auditory Feature Tuning In A Real-Time Neuromorphic Vlsi System., Sadique Sheik, Martin Coath, Giacomo Indiveri, Susan L. Denham, Thomas Wennekers, Elisabetta Chicca

School of Engineering, Computing and Mathematics

Many sounds of ecological importance, such as communication calls, are characterized by time-varying spectra. However, most neuromorphic auditory models to date have focused on distinguishing mainly static patterns, under the assumption that dynamic patterns can be learned as sequences of static ones. In contrast, the emergence of dynamic feature sensitivity through exposure to formative stimuli has been recently modeled in a network of spiking neurons based on the thalamo-cortical architecture. The proposed network models the effect of lateral and recurrent connections between cortical layers, distance-dependent axonal transmission delays, and learning in the form of Spike Timing Dependent Plasticity (STDP), which …

Non-Invasive Prenatal Diagnostic Test Accuracy For Fetal Sex Using Cell-Free Dna A Review And Meta-Analysis, Caroline F. Wright, Yinghui Wei, Julian Pt Higgins, Gurdeep S. Sagoo

School of Engineering, Computing and Mathematics

AbstractBackgroundCell-free fetal DNA (cffDNA) can be detected in maternal blood during pregnancy, opening the possibility of early non-invasive prenatal diagnosis for a variety of genetic conditions. Since 1997, many studies have examined the accuracy of prenatal fetal sex determination using cffDNA, particularly for pregnancies at risk of an X-linked condition. Here we report a review and meta-analysis of the published literature to evaluate the use of cffDNA for prenatal determination (diagnosis) of fetal sex. We applied a sensitive search of multiple bibliographic databases including PubMed (MEDLINE), EMBASE, the Cochrane library and Web of Science.ResultsNinety studies, incorporating 9,965 pregnancies and 10,587 …

Bilateral Aid To Least Developed Countries: A Study Of The U.S., The U.K., France And Japan, Dave Warren '12

The Park Place Economist

Bilateral aid allocation is affected by a number of factors on the donor side. It has been found that public satisfaction with government positively affects the willingness to give bilateral aid (Gradstein and Chong, 2007). Economic and strategic interests of the donor country play a role in determining bilateral aid allocation (Tingley, 2009). Perhaps the most interesting finding is that ideology has a significant impact on bilateral aid allocation (Fleck and Kilby, 2001) (Milner and Tingley, 2010).

How Do Organisations Engage In Marketing Strategy Making? A Problemistic Search Perspective, Sarah Browne, Katrina Lawlor, Pamela Sharkey Scott, Laura Cuddihy

Conference papers

Despite the importance of marketing strategy making (MSM) we understand little of how strategy making actually occurs within organisations. Departing from the common focus - on the tools and techniques of strategy– we apply a strategy as practice (SAP) lens to our exploration of MSM. We adopt a problemistic search perspective and utilise an in-depth case study to explore individual’s interactions in developing strategic marketing initiatives. We uncover a three-stage pattern in solution search within MSM; identification of the problem situation and postponing response, to problem recognition and acceptance, to a collective problem solving stage, which we label pre implementation …

The Student Perspective: Can The Use Of Technologies Transform Learning?, Eileen O'Donnell

Books/Book Chapters

This chapter explores students’ perspectives on the transformations that the use of technology has brought to higher education. The use of technologies in higher education facilitates flexible learning environments but the benefits to students who engage with these technologies will only be realised if the design is pedagogically sound. The pedagogic approach employed by lecturers when designing their e-learning platforms or learning management systems has the capability to transform learning. The author’s discipline is Information Technology and Business Information Systems; from experience and case studies there is ample evidence to suggest that the use of technology does not always necessarily …

Evolution Of Grasping Behaviour In Anthropomorphic Robotic Arms With Embodied Neural Controllers, Gianluca Massera

School of Engineering, Computing and Mathematics Theses

The works reported in this thesis focus upon synthesising neural controllers for anthropomorphic robots that are able to manipulate objects through an automatic design process based on artificial evolution. The use of Evolutionary Robotics makes it possible to reduce the characteristics and parameters specified by the designer to a minimum, and the robot’s skills evolve as it interacts with the environment. The primary objective of these experiments is to investigate whether neural controllers that are regulating the state of the motors on the basis of the current and previously experienced sensors (i.e. without relying on an inverse model) can enable …

Developing A Collaborative Virtual Learning Environment Between Students In Cross Disciplines To Meet The New College Structure, Ruairi Hayden, Fiacra P. Mcdonnell

Teaching Fellowships

p> Integrated project delivery is a rapidly developing approach to design and construction that uses business structures, new technologies and newly developing practices to collaboratively use the talents and contributions of all participants in the design and construction process. This project replicates this approach by creating a collaborative project between the Department of Construction Management and Technology and the Department of Quantity Surveying. The term “collaborative learning” refers to an instruction method in which students at various performance levels work together in small groups towards a common goal. The students are responsible for one another’s learning as well as their …

Practice Makes Practice . . . Visible? Revealing Structures Of The Artistic Field By Articulating The Evasive Properties Inherent In Its Systems Of Production Through Art Practice, Naomi Elizabeth Sex

Other

This practice-led research project attempts to seek out and reveal the structures that frame the production of art practice, through and with art practice itself. With this premise in mind, the first phase of the study aims to use practice-led research by adopting quasi-ethnographic strategies firstly to explore the field of artistic production, and secondly in an attempt to activate, capture and contain tangible evidence that the artistic field is powered by persuasive informal discourse and practices that contribute to stringent and hierarchical rules of engagement. Entering the second phase of the project the contribution of this study is based …

Reclaiming Literacy Classroom Through Critical Dialogue, Bob Fecho, Dawan Coombs, Sean Mcauley

Faculty Publications

Tim (all student names are pseudonyms), a young English teacher, took a position in a corporately owned charter school. Despite misgivings—“Just not sure privatization and choice are the saviors of public education”—Tim needed a job and accepted what was offered.

Typically for Tim, he threw himself into his teaching, getting additionally involved in class sponsorship and student government. As an offshoot of these activities, Tim asked his sophomore classes to write about, and then discuss, the seeming lack of school spirit and what they could do about it:

Restaurant Selection In Dublin, Frank Cullen

Articles

The primary objective of this research was to investigate the selection process used by consumers when choosing a restaurant to dine. This study examined literature on consumer behaviour, restaurant selection, and decision-making, underpinning the contention that service quality is linked to the consumer’s selection of a restaurant. It supports the utility theories that consumers buy bundles of attributes that simultaneously combined represent a certain level of service quality at a certain price. The findings of the research displayed a preference by Dublin consumers for Italian and Chinese styled restaurants and identified quality of the food, type of food, cleanliness of …

The Holiday Experience And Personal Values: An Irish Case Study, Sean Ruane, Deirdre Quinn

Conference papers

Personal values have been a focus of interest for consumer behaviour researchers for many years due to the belief that values influence a person’s lifestyle, and therefore provide a useful explanation for the multitude of interests, outlooks on life and consumption priorities that define a person’s consumer behaviour (Muller, 1991). Tourist satisfaction is a positive function of both functional congruity between the expectations of the individual and choice of destination, and their perception about themselves. Linking destination image with the self can help in understanding this behaviour by focusing on the specific attributes of the holiday and how they match …

International Office News, Fall 2012, Illinois Wesleyan University

International Office News

No abstract provided.

Developing Reusable Learning Objects At Itt Dublin Via The Irish National Digital Learning Repository, Philip Russell, Gerry Ryder, Gillian Kerins

Support services (Former ITT) - Other Resources

During a two year period commencing from June 2010 until the present, a suite of online reusable learning objects (RLOs) have been created at ITT Dublin library covering a range of information literacy competencies.

This poster will outline the development of RLOs at ITT Dublin and how these resources have been shared, reused and repurposed to enhance information literacy progression. The article will focus on best practices and lessons learned during the design, development, and implementation process including the pedagogical approach, application of the software and the collaborative working arrangements that the digital learning resources have helped to foster.

Evaluating The Similarity Estimator Component Of The Twin Personality-Based Recommender System, Alexandra Roshchina, John Cardiff, Paolo Rosso

Conference Papers

With the constant increase in the amount of information available in online communities, the task of building an appropriate Recommender System to support the user in her decision making process is becoming more and more challenging. In addition to the classical collaborative filtering and content based approaches, taking into account ratings, preferences and demographic characteristics of the users, a new type of Recommender System, based on personality parameters, has been emerging recently. In this paper we describe the TWIN (Tell Me What I Need) Personality Based Recommender System, and report on our experiments and experiences of utilizing techniques which allow …

The Importance Of Human Mental Workload In Web Design, Luca Longo, Fabio Rusconi, Lucia Noce, Stephen Barrett

Conference papers

The focus of this study is the introduction of the construct of Human Mental Workload (HMW) in Web design, aimed at supporting current interaction design practices. An experiment has been conducted using the original Wikipedia and Google web-interfaces, and using two slightly different versions. Three subjective psychological mental workload assessment techniques (NASA-TLX, Workload Profile and SWAT) with a well-established assessments usability tool (SUS) have been adopted. T-tests have been performed to study the statistical significance of the original and modified web-pages, in terms of workload required by typical tasks and perceived usability. Preliminary results show that, in one ideal case, …

Ethnic Group Affiliation And Social Exclusion In Cornwall; Analysis, Adjustment And Extension Of The 2001 England And Wales Census Data, Kerryn Husk

School of Law, Humanities and Social Sciences Theses

This thesis provides a critical understanding of the size and relative position of the Cornish in Cornwall, a county in the south-west of the UK. Cornwall is a region which has experienced increased levels of disadvantage for a prolonged period of time. The indigenous people, whilst seeing a rise in their inclusion in ethnicity variables in the region, have remained under-researched in terms of their socio-economic position relative to the non-Cornish in the same geographic area. This thesis addresses this gap in the literature and represents the first in-depth examination of the group. The 2001 Census included an option to …

Lost In Translation, Christine Peterson '16

Outstanding Gateway Papers

The ramifications of Proposition 227, legislation that threatened to eliminate bilingual education passed by California in 1998, sparked a nationwide debate about the validity of education that non-English speaking students were receiving in a bilingual classroom versus that of an English-only classroom. While there was a deluge of arguments regarding the efficiency of English comprehension in the two classroom environments, what many commentators on the issue overlooked was the difference in the retention of the students’ identities.

The Experience Of Progressing From Community Education To Third Level Education From A Learner’S Perspective, Alan Farrell

Students Learning with Communities

This study explored the experiences of community learners as they progressed from community education to third level education. It also examined the reflections of those who had completed their studies and the impact that education had on their lives. It focused on former students, students currently participating in certificate courses, and also students studying on college access programmes. It was hoped to give a broad view of perspectives on the contrast between community learning and third level education.The study attempts to focus on the positive aspects of the experience rather than the barriers which each student faced. Data collection was …

Bullying Policies In Iowa Schools, Terri A. Buettell

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

This review examines research on bullying. Bullying is defined, along with the various roles filled by children, including bully, assistant, reinforcer, defender, outsider, or victim. The outcomes for participants and the systems in which they interact are cause for action. Bullying usually occurs in the school setting, making it an appropriate environment for intervention. Components of successful programs are discussed, specifically, the Olweus Bullying Prevention Program, Promoting Alternative Thinking Strategies (PATHS), and Bully Busters, highlighting the successes associated with them and the importance of the teacher's role, along with increasing awareness in the school, organizational strategies, and rewards and consequences …

Identitas Tionghoa Muslim Indonesia Pasca-Orde Baru: Melampaui Batas-Batas Kategori Peranakan Dan Totok, Afthonul Afif

Antropologi Indonesia

The dramatic change in some important aspects of this country after the collapse of New Order Regime, primarily in the political aspect, provided larger opportunity to Indonesian Chinese in constructing their real identity, included to the Indonesian Chinese Muslim. In one hand, Indonesian Chinese Muslim tended to re-strengthen their cultural identity shown by articulating some features of their ethnic identity, and they show more the involvement in developing discourse of national building and the life of majority group by using their Islamic identity in the other hand. At this point, they then could not be categorized as ‘peranakan’ and ‘totok’, …

Women's Status And Fertility Rates : Results From National Level Data, Jason Thomas Surratt

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

The rapid increase in human population makes the study of fertility rates an area of imminent concern. Understanding the relationship between women's status and fertility rates is important because providing women with access to adequate health services, educational opportunities, occupational opportunities, and political power will give them greater control over their lives. With increased control over their lives women are more likely to limit the number of children they have to their desired amount as they gain access to the resources to limit child bearing and to find fulfillment in other areas of their lives. This study contributes to the …

Role Strain In Probation And Parole Work And Strategies Used To Reduce Strain, Samantha A. Shoger

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

Probation and parole officers play a vital role in the operation of the correctional system. As a part of their role work in community-based corrections, probation and parole officers must act as both a client monitor and treatment counselor to not only assist in client reentry, but also to protect the public. Due to the nature of probation and parole work and the historical changes that have affected their work (i.e. the punitive turn, the New Penology, and the current correctional budgetary constraints), probation and parole officers must cope with a variety of factors in their work that can cause …

Sociology By Any Other Name: Teaching The Sociological Perspective In Campus Diversity Programs, Meghan Burke, Kira Hudson Banks

Scholarship

This article suggests that the way in to sociology may not always be through the front door. The authors demonstrate how students in a three-day campus diversity program develop a sociological imagination despite not having a formal affiliation with the sociology department. In particular, students demonstrate a move from color blindness into racial consciousness and a shift from individual prejudice into institutional privilege when understanding both diversity issues and their own personal biographies. In short, despite not knowing the phrase, they develop a sociological imagination. While the goal is not to diminish the significance of traditional sociology classrooms, the authors …

Purity, Balance And Wellness Among The Swahili Of Lamu, Kenya, Munib Abdulrehman, Rebecca Gearhart

Scholarship

The Swahili of Lamu Island, Kenya, are part of a larger Swahili nation that extends along the East African coast, from northern Mozambique to southern Somalia, and includes archipelagos (Lamu, Zanzibar, Comoros) in the adjacent Indian Ocean. As the Swahili established themselves into an important economic niche as the middlemen of trade between East Africans and visitors from across the Indian Ocean over the centuries, the Swahili language became the primary trade language of East Africa. Since hundreds of African ethnic groups reside in this region, each with a unique native language, speaking Swahili as a first language is both …

Automated Human Screening For Detecting Concealed Knowledge, Nathan W. Twyman

Business and Information Technology Faculty Research & Creative Works

Screening individuals for concealed knowledge has traditionally been the purview of professional interrogators investigating a crime. But the ability to detect when a person is hiding important information would be of high value to many other fields and functions. This dissertation proposes design principles for and reports on an implementation and empirical evaluation of a non-invasive, automated system for human screening. The screening system design (termed an automated screening kiosk or ASK) is patterned after a standard interviewing method called the Concealed Information Test (CIT), which is built on theories explaining psychophysiological and behavioral effects of human orienting and defensive …

Journalism Education And Children's Rights: New Approaches To Media Development In Cee/Cis Countries, Michael Foley, Noirin Hayes, Brian O'Neill

Articles

This article gives the background to a project entitled Children's Rights and Journalism Practice, which was carried out for UNICEF in university journalism faculties in CEE/CIS countries

By focusing on journalism in the context of the academy and raising awareness of children’s rights from a journalistic perspective, the project seeks to provide a relatively safe space for critical engagement with journalistic ethics and values. Children are targets of, or are implicated in, nearly all aspects of public policy, yet are largely invisible in news-media coverage, and rarely have their voices heard in matters affecting them. By using the UNCRC as …

Stepping Stone Community Education – A Stepping Stone To Third Level Education., Lorraine Perkins

Dissertations

The focus of this research is to explore supports that facilitated participation and retention of learners on a community education course and additional supports needed to progress to third level education. This research was in partnership with Irish National Association of Adult Education (AONTAS) and supported by Community Links, Technological University Dublin. (DIT)

This research is qualitative in nature. For this purpose, a focus group of community learners and semi-structured interviews with community education professionals was conducted. The research gives in-depth insight into learners experiences of what supports facilitated participation in community education and additional supports needed to progress to …

From Simple Healer To Doctorally Educated Clinician, Lindsey Decampos-Stairiker

University Honors Theses

The profession of physical therapy today is the culmination of various techniques, approaches, and knowledge sources from many different disciplines and philosophies. It is a highly dynamic and progressive field which focuses on incorporating new knowledge and techniques into the established practice: while some aspects can be traced back several millennia, others are the product of evolution and modernization within the field due to discoveries and advances in medical science as well as the needs and demands of the ever changing general population. In order to trace the evolution of the field, this review considered not only the direct progression, …

Men In Black, Martin Munoz

Jesuit Higher Education: A Journal

At almost every Catholic university you will undoubtedly find old photographs of a sepia colored world, grainy artifacts steeped in tradition with narratives all but forgotten, like clouds passing in a blue sky. These photographs are but a moment in time, only the instruments that captured these moments may exist, a reminder of how science has permanence in a world ruled by the machine while stories pass on like ghostly figures in an indifferent province. The stories within these photos that once were filled with hope, promise and faith are now silent; only the reverberations of their memory remain.