Digital Commons Network^™

Overview Of Approaches To Preventing And Avoiding Proteolysis During Expression And Purification Of Proteins, Barry Ryan, Gary Henehan

Articles

Proteases are enzymes that cleave proteins. They occur widely in nature and serve a fundamental role in cellular homeostasis; however, their presence can result in unwanted protein degradation during recombinant protein expression and purification. This unit introduces proteases, specifically outlining the types commonly encountered during production of recombinant proteins. The strategies used to avoid and to prevent proteolysis are also highlighted with extensive consideration of the molecular, technical, and logistical methodologies involved

The Effect Of Dialect On Speech Audiometry Testing, Shawn L. Nissen, Richard W. Harris, Ron W. Channell, Nathan E. Richardson, Jamie A. Garlick, Dennis L. Eggett

Faculty Publications

Purpose: In this study, the authors examined the validity of using materials from 2 nonregional yet mutually intelligible dialects to evaluate an individual’s speech recognition threshold (SRT) and word recognition (WR) abilities and whether a speaker of 1 dialect could accurately administer and score materials in the other dialect. Method: Previously created SRT and WR materials were presented to 32 Mandarin listeners with normal hearing:16 speakers of Mainland Mandarin and 16 speakers of Taiwan Mandarin. Hearing abilities were examined using SRT and WR materials created for speakers from 2 different regional dialects. Presentation of the materials occur red during 2 …

Image Authentication Using Stochastic Diffusion, Abdulrahman I. Al-Rawi, Jonathan Blackledge

Conference papers

This paper considers an approach to encrypted information hiding based on Stochastic Diffusion for encrypting digital images coupled with the application of a Least Significant Bit (LSB) method for information embedding. After providing a brief summary of various information hiding methods based on spatial and transform domain techniques, two new methods are introduced. The first of these considers a binary image watermarking algorithm for hiding an image in a single host image which is based on binarization of the encrypted data. The second method extends this approach to solving the problem of 24-bit image hiding in three host images which …

An Investigation Into Energy Consumption And Existing Energy Management Practices In A Dublin Sports Centre, Colin J. Conway

Dissertations

Rising energy costs are a concern to all businesses but especially to those who have a large energy demand. Sports centres with swimming pools have large requirements for heat and electricity in order to maintain thermal comfort within the pool and surrounding areas.

Sports centres which were built in the 1970s were designed at a time when energy was cheap and many of today’s control strategies and energy efficiency measures were unavailable.

This project is an investigation into the electrical and thermal consumption of the Tallaght Sports Complex. The Tallaght Sports Complex was built in the 1970s and is lacking …

An Evaluation Of Seawater Pumped Hydro Storage For Regulating The Export Of Wind Energy To The National Grid, Eoin D. Mclean

Dissertations

Hydroelectric power generation has been in use for a very long time. From the earliest watermills to the current large scale Hydro power plants, this is a technology that is proven to be reliable and commercially viable. The use of wind energy to provide mechanical power for the purpose of turning a rotor is also not a new concept.Four years ago TCD Professor of Applied Physics Igor Shvets conceived the idea of solving Ireland’s energy crisis by taking these two proven renewable technologies and combining them. (McGreevey, 2012) The spirit of Ireland initiative seeks to resolve the biggest issues facing …

The Influence Of Asynchronous Video Communication On Learner Social Presence: A Narrative Analysis Of Four Cases, Jered Borup, Richard E. West, Charles R. Graham

Faculty Publications

Online courses are increasingly using asynchronous video communication. However, little is known about how asynchronous video communication influences students’ communication patterns. This study presents four narratives of students with varying characteristics who engaged in asynchronous video communication. The extrovert valued the efficiency of making video comments but saw little value in viewing the video comments of her peers. Somewhat inversely, the English language learner valued the video comments of her peers but lacked the ability to fully participate herself. The introverted student valued the flexibility and richness of asynchronous video but spent an inordinate amount of time recording her videos. …

The Edition, 6th Of November, 2013, Dit News Society

Student Publications

No abstract provided.

The Edition, 4th Of December, 2013, Dit News Society

Student Publications

No abstract provided.

"That I May Dwell Among Them": Liminality And Ritual In The Tabernacle, Dan Belnap, Daniel L. Belnap

Faculty Publications

For many, it can be difficult to discern the spiritual value of the rituals described within the Old Testament. This is certainly understandable, since the culture that performed these acts is separated from us by some three thousand years. Yet throughout the scriptures we are told that the Lord speaks to his children in their language and in their tongue, “that they might come to understanding” (D&C 1:24). Though the symbolism and imagery may be unfamiliar to us, we can trust that the symbols used and the rites performed by ancient Israel were meant to teach us familiar gospel principles …

Who Cares?:Practical Ethics And The Problem Of Underage Users On Social Networking Sites, Brian O'Neill

Articles

Internet companies place a high priority on the safety of their services and on their corporate responsibility towards protection of all users, especially younger ones. However, such efforts are undermined by the large numbers of children who circumvent age restrictions and lie about their age to gain access to such platforms. This paper deals with the ethical issues that arise in this not-so-hypothetical situation. Who, for instance, bears responsibility for children’s welfare in this context? Are parents/carers ethically culpable in failing to be sufficiently vigilant or even facilitating their children’s social media use? Do industry providers do enough to enforce …

Yellowstone Over-Snow Vehicle Emission Tests – 2012, John D. Ray, Gary A. Bishop, Brent G. Schuchmann, Chris Frey, Gurdas Sandhu, Brandon Graver

Fuel Efficiency Automobile Test Publications

No abstract provided.

Charge Propagation In A Classical Background., Merfat Raddadi

School of Engineering, Computing and Mathematics Theses

Abstract This thesis advances the understanding of charge propagation in a classical background through the study of the canonical quantisation of a charged particle in an intense laser background and the associated twopoint function. We will clarify how the causal propagator can be extracted. In addition, in this thesis we will provide an interpretation of this propagator in terms of degenerate quantum processes. We show how to use the Feynman diagram technique to build up a perturbative description of the interaction with the laser background. This also includes how multi-pole structures emerge as a perturbative feature. For all orders in …

An Investigation Into Children's Understanding Of The Order Of Operations, Caroline Headlam

School of Engineering, Computing and Mathematics Theses

An investigation into children’s understanding of the order of operations This thesis reports on the findings of an international study into the way in which children approach calculations which involve the order of operations. The study involved 203 pupils aged between 12 to 14 years from four different countries: England, The USA (New York State), Japan and The Netherlands. Many pupils in England are taught to use mnemonics such as BODMAS or BIDMAS to remember the correct order of operations, and in the USA pupils are often taught to use PEMDAS. However in Japan and The Netherlands these methods are …

An Investigation Of Electromyographic (Emg) Control Of Dextrous Hand Prostheses For Transradial Amputees, Ali Hussian Ali

School of Engineering, Computing and Mathematics Theses

There are many amputees around the world who have lost a limb through conflict, disease or an accident. Upper-limb prostheses controlled using surface Electromyography (sEMG) offer a solution to help the amputees; however, their functionality is limited by the small number of movements they can perform and their slow reaction times. Pattern recognition (PR)-based EMG control has been proposed to improve the functional performance of prostheses. It is a very promising approach, offering intuitive control, fast reaction times and the ability to control a large number of degrees of freedom (DOF). However, prostheses controlled with PR systems are not available …

Busy Boards, Cash Holdings And Corporate Liquidity: Evidence From Uk Panel Data, Valentina Tarkovska

Conference papers

This study examines the effect of board busyness on corporate cash holdings. We offer new insights by evaluating two conflicting views regarding the quality of service that busy directors provide to corporate boards and their impact on decision making. One view is that directors who simultaneously serve on multiple boards improve board decision making ability as they have better experience and bu siness connections (reputational effect).The opposite view is that directors with multiple seats are “too busy to mind the business”, which creates serious agency problems and leads into suboptimal corporate decisions(busyness effect). We analyse a large sample of UK …

Novel Polyomaviruses Of Nonhuman Primates: Genetic And Serological Predictors For The Existence Of Multiple Unknown Polyomaviruses Within The Human Population, Nelly Scuda, Nadege Freda Madinda, Chantal Akoua-Koffi, Edgard Valerie Adjogoua, Diana Wevers, Jörg Hofmann, Kenneth N. Cameron, Saj Leendertz, Emmanuel Couacy-Hymann, Martha Robbins, Christophe Boesch, Michael A. Jarvis, Ugo Moens, Lawrence Mugisha, Sébastien Calvignac-Spencer, Fh Leendertz, Bernhard Ehlers

School of Biomedical Sciences

No abstract provided.

Challenges Encountered In Creating Personalised Learning Activities To Suit Students Learning Preferences, Eileen O'Donnell, Vincent Wade, Mary Sharp, Liam O'Donnell

Books/Book Chapters

This book chapter reviews some of the challenges encountered by educators in creating personalised e-learning activities to suit students learning preferences. Technology-enhanced learning (TEL) alternatively known as e-learning has not yet reached its full potential in higher education. There are still many potential uses as yet undiscovered and other discovered uses which are not yet realisable by many educators. TEL is still predominantly used for e-dissemination and e-administration. This chapter reviews the potential use of TEL to provide personalised learning activities to suit individual students learning preferences. In particular the challenges encountered by educators when trying to implement personalised learning …

Web-Mediated Education And Training Environments: A Review Of Personalised Interactive Learning., Eileen O'Donnell, Mary Sharp, Catherine Mulwa, Vincent Wade

Books/Book Chapters

This chapter reviews the concept of personalised eLearning resources in relation to integrating interactivity into asynchronous learning. Personalised eLearning resources are learning resources which are selected to suit a specific student or trainee’s individual learning requirements. The affordance of personalised eLearning would provide educators with the opportunity to shift away from eLearning content that is retrieved and move towards the provision of personalised interactive content to provide a form of asynchronous learning to suit students at different degree levels. A basic introduction to the concept of ePedagogy in online learning environments is explored and the impacts these systems have on …

How Important Is The Local, Really? A Cross-Institutional Quantitative Assessment Of Frequently Asked Questions In Writing Center Exit Surveys, Pam Bromley, Kara Northway, Eliana Schonberg

The Writing Center Journal

No abstract provided.

A Semantic Web Based Search Engine With X3d Visualisation Of Queries And Results, Konstantinos Gkoutzis

School of Engineering, Computing and Mathematics Theses

The Semantic Web project has introduced new techniques for managing information. Data can now be organised more efficiently and in such a way that computers can take advantage of the relationships that characterise the given input to present more relevant output. Semantic Web based search engines can quickly educe exactly what is needed to be found and retrieve it while avoiding information overload. Up until now, search engines have interacted with their users by asking them to look for words and phrases. We propose the creation of a new generation Semantic Web search engine that will offer a visual interface …

On Reducing The Decoding Complexity Of Shingled Magnetic Recording System, Nadia Awad

School of Engineering, Computing and Mathematics Theses

Shingled Magnetic Recording (SMR) has been recognised as one of the alternative technologies to achieve an areal density beyond the limit of the perpendicular recording technique, 1 Tb/in2, which has an advantage of extending the use of the conventional method media and read/write head. This work presents SMR system subject to both Inter Symbol Interference (ISI) and Inter Track Interference (ITI) and investigates different equalisation/detection techniques in order to reduce the complexity of this system. To investigate the ITI in shingled systems, one-track one-head system model has been extended into two-track one-head system model to have two interfering tracks. Consequently, …

Industrialising Software Development In Systems Integration, Matthias Ernst Minich

School of Engineering, Computing and Mathematics Theses

Compared to other disciplines, software engineering as of today is still dependent on craftsmanship of highly-skilled workers. However, with constantly increasing complexity and efforts, existing software engineering approaches appear more and more inefficient. A paradigm shift towards industrial production methods seems inevitable. Recent advances in academia and practice have lead to the availability of industrial key principles in software development as well. Specialization is represented in software product lines, standardization and systematic reuse are available with component-based development, and automation has become accessible through model-driven engineering. While each of the above is well researched in theory, only few cases of …

Bayesian Pathway Analysis In Epigenetics, Alan Wright

School of Engineering, Computing and Mathematics Theses

A typical gene expression data set consists of measurements of a large number of gene expressions, on a relatively small number of subjects, classified according to two or more outcomes, for example cancer or non-cancer. The identification of associations between gene expressions and outcome is a huge multiple testing problem. Early approaches to this problem involved the application of thousands of univariate tests with corrections for multiplicity. Over the past decade, numerous studies have demonstrated that analyzing gene expression data structured into predefined gene sets can produce benefits in terms of statistical power and robustness when compared to alternative approaches. …

Application Of Lean Thinking Using Simulation Modelling In A Private Hospital, Ayman Tobail, Patrick Egan, Waleed Abo-Hamad, Amr Arisha

Conference papers

Timely access, prompt responses to patient needs, and availability of resources to deliver quality service are the key priorities of healthcare systems, in particular hospitals. To cope with these constraints, healthcare managers have turned into lean thinking and approaches in their attempts to reduce non-value added activities and save costs by reducing wastes. This paper presents a case study of a private hospital in Dublin that used integrated approach of value stream mapping and simulation modeling to assess lean implementation in admission and discharge processes. Simulation enabled the strategic management to examine the outcomes of three possible improvement scenarios on …

Effects Of Short Term Stretching On Ankle Stiffness And Range Of Motion In People With Multiple Sclerosis, Jodielin Ofori

School of Health Professions Theses

Hypertonia is seen in 85% of people with Multiple Sclerosis (pwMS) resulting in disability and functional restrictions. Hypertonia can be caused by increases in passive stiffness and enhanced stretch reflexes (spasticity) and is frequently managed clinically using passive stretches. However, the optimal parameters of stretching such as the applied torque and stretch duration remain unclear. During commonly prescribed ankle plantarflexor stretches pwMS produced higher torques when standing in a weight bearing position compared to stretches applied using the upper limbs. Stretches could be held for 120 seconds on average and stretch duration was mainly limited by fatigue. People with higher …

Relationship Between Fear Of Falling And Mobility Varies With Visual Function Among Older Adults, Orna Donoghue, Harriet Ryan, Eoin Duggan, Ciaran Finucane, George Sava, Hilary Cronin, James Loughman, Rose Anne Kenny

Articles

Aim: The present study examined the association between vision, fear of falling and fear-related activity restriction, and assessed the effect of vision on the relationship between fear of falling and mobility, using data from a nationally representative sample of community-dwelling adults aged ≥50 years. Methods: Participants (n = 5003) completed an interview and health assessment (including Timed Up-and-Go, vision and cognitive tests). Visual acuity and contrast sensitivity were assessed using an Early Treatment Diabetic Retinopathy Study logMAR chart and Functional Vision Analyzer, respectively. Participants self-reported their vision as excellent, very good, good, fair or poor. They were assigned to no …

Impact Of Computer Experience On The Viability And Repeatablity Of The Moorfields Motion Displacement Test In A Developing And Underserved African Setting, James Loughman, Carmen Gonzalez Alvarez, Gay Mary Verdon-Roe, Roger Anderson, Ramos Antonio Manuel, Kovin Naidoo

Articles

Background: The current study was designed to explore the effect of computer experience on the viability and testretest repeatability of the Moorfields Motion Displacement Test (MMDT), a novel computer-driven glaucoma screening device, in an African community setting. Methods: 164 healthy subjects were recruited from a semi-rural Mozambican environment, and stratified according to computer experience (computer naïve: n=85, computer familiar: n=79). A suprathreshold screening test algorithm was employed, and the global probability of true damage (GPTD), testing time (TT) and false positive (FP) response rate were recorded. The visual field test was conducted twice on the same eye, and results compared …

Suitability And Repeatability Of A Photostress Recovery Test Device, The Macular Degeneration Detector (Mdd-2), For Diabetes And Diabetic Retinopathy Assessment, James Loughman, Matthew Ratzlaff, Brittany Foerg, Paul Connell

Articles

Background: Diabetic retinopathy can result in impaired photostress recovery time despite normal visual acuity and fundoscopic appearance. The Macular Degeneration Detector (MDD-2) is a novel flash photostress recovery time device. In this study, we examine the repeatability of the MDD-2 in normal and diabetic subjects. Methods: One hundred and ninety one (90 women, 101 men) subjects were recruited and divided into 1 of the 3 study groups (normal controls, n = 40; diabetes no retinopathy, n = 98; nonproliferative diabetic retinopathy, n = 53). Photostress recovery time was measured three times in the study eye using the MDD-2, each measurement …

Decomposition Of Ireland’S Carbon Emissions From 1990-2010: An Extended Kaya Identity, Tadhg O'Mahony

Articles

In recent decades, Ireland has been an important example of a development pathway where rapid economic growth was accompanied by rising energy demand and increasing carbon emissions. Understanding the driving forces of carbon emissions is necessary for policy formulation and decomposition analysis is widely used for this purpose. This study uses an extended Kaya identity as the scheme and applies the log mean Divisia index (LMDI I) as the decomposition technique. Change in carbon emissions is decomposed from 1990 – 2010 and includes a measure of the effect of renewable energy penetration. Results illustrate that scale effects of affluence and …

Give Them Something To Talk About: The Role Of Dialogue In Mentoring Relationships, Dawan Coombs, Kate Goodwin

Faculty Publications

An effective mentor/protégé relationship is essentially dialogical. Given that the mentor learns as the beginner learns, the mentor needs to take a dialogical stance to promote open conversations and investigation. Journals, blogs, observations, and subsequent debriefings help both the mentor and the beginner to learn much about teaching and learning.