Digital Commons Network^™

Automated Tracking Of Hand Hygiene Stages, Rashmi Bakshi

Masters

The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) estimates that 2.5 millioncases of Hospital Acquired Infections (HAIs) occur each year in the European Union. Handhygiene is regarded as one of the most important preventive measures for HAIs. If it is implemented properly, hand hygiene can reduce the risk of cross-transmission of an infection in the healthcare environment. Good hand hygiene is not only important for healthcare settings. Therecent ongoing coronavirus pandemic has highlighted the importance of hand hygiene practices in our daily lives, with governments and health authorities around the world promoting goodhand hygiene practices. The WHO has published …

Food Industries Wastewater Recycling For Biodiesel Production Through Microalgal Remediation, Divakar Dahiya, Uttam K. Ghosh, Poonam S. Nigam, Amit Jaiswal

Articles

This article is an overview of a biosystem of food-industry wastewater (WW) treatment using microalgae towards circular bioeconomy through biosynthesis of compounds of added-value. Focusing on circular bioeconomy with concern to environmental pollution, the management of water-resource and energy-crisis could be combined; by upgrading conventional WW treatment and simultaneously producing a renewable and sustainable source of energy algal-lipids for biodiesel production. Phyco-remediation of food WW using microalgae has revealed many advantages that can fulfill new demands for the WW treatment. WWs can be valuable resources of micronutrients and organic content (carbon source) for algal cultivation. In this review, prospective routes …

Machine Learning For Auditory Hierarchy, William Coleman

Dissertations

Coleman, W. (2021). Machine Learning for Auditory Hierarchy. This dissertation is submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, Technological University Dublin. Audio content is predominantly delivered in a stereo audio file of a static, pre-formed mix. The content creator makes volume, position and effects decisions, generally for presentation in stereo speakers, but has no control ultimately over how the content will be consumed. This leads to poor listener experience when, for example, a feature film is mixed such that the dialogue is at a low level relative to the sound effects. Consumers can complain that they must turn …

Pride, Shame And Tv Dinners, Edward Brennan

Conference papers

This paper critiques a dominant narrative in the history of Irish television, which typically equate television’s arrival with the launch of RTÉ in 1961 and interpret its development through a state-centred, modernisation framework. Drawing on life-story interviews with people who experienced television in Ireland during the 1950s and 1960s, the research challenges methodological nationalism by foregrounding memory as a source. It reveals how television was an uncertain status object that carried meanings of pride, shame, discipline, and cultural value. Theoretically informed by Bourdieu, Halbwachs, and Inglis, the paper analyses recollection as practical social action. Early television consumption was mediated by …

Geopolitics Of Finance In Africa: Birth Of Financial Centres, Not Monetary Unions, Elizabeth Cobbett

School of Law, Humanities and Social Sciences

No abstract provided.

Illegal Waste Exports: Misdescription At Point Of Export, J Lowther

School of Law, Humanities and Social Sciences

Hazardous waste exports are, rightly, the subject of a significant and complex legal regime operating at levels from international through to domestic law. A murky history of developed countries exporting waste to their less developed counterparts prompted the development and agreement of the Basel Convention on Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and their Disposal.1 This Convention has a broad constituency for an international environmental law instrument, having almost universal membership.2 Amendments and protocols to enhance the basic obligations in the Convention have been adopted, including the Liability Protocol and the Basel Ban amendment, which applies in the main …

The Pregnant Pause, Sarah Blissett

School of Art, Design and Architecture

No abstract provided.

The Social Infrastructure Of The Smart City: How Can "Smart Cities" Be More Inclusive?, K Willis

School of Art, Design and Architecture

The smart city promises a new model of integrated urban design bringing together people, urban spaces and smart technologies. The quote above highlights the question of not only who owns the frameworks of the smart city but also more importantly who has access and what does this access enable them to do. We need to ask carefully who is included and recognise that the smart city often excludes the very people, communities and place it claims to help. The key is to establish how marginalised or excluded groups may benefit – or not – in these initiatives. In order to …

A Novel User Oriented Network Forensic Analysis Tool, Dany Joy

School of Engineering, Computing and Mathematics Theses

In the event of a cybercrime, it is necessary to examine the suspect’s digital device(s) in a forensic fashion so that the culprit can be presented in court along with the extracted evidence(s). But, factors such as existence and availability of anti-forensic tools/techniques and increasing replacement of hard disk drives with solid state disks have the ability to eradicate critical evidences and/or ruin their integrity. Therefore, having an alternative source of evidence with a lesser chance of being tampered with can be beneficial for the investigation. The organisational network traffic can fit into this role as it is an independent …

Autonomic Management Of Service Level Agreements In Cloud Computing, Stefan Edwin Karl Frey

School of Engineering, Computing and Mathematics Theses

Autonomic Management of Service Level Agreements in Cloud Computing Cloud computing has been one of the major trending topics of recent years in the Information Technology (IT) industry. In contrary to the previous IT service delivery models, where all the services and resources were hosted locally, the idea behind cloud computing is to deliver computing resources or services on-demand over a network on an easy pay-per-use business model. This paradigm change included almost all areas of the modern IT landscape, be it the storage and sharing of data for example with services like Dropbox, Microsoft OneDrive or Google Drive or …

An Introduction To Transatlantic Writing Center Resources, Pam Bromley, Katrin Girgensohn, Kara Northway, Eliana Schonberg

The Writing Center Journal

No abstract provided.

Digital Health’S Impact On Integrated Care, Carer Empowerment And Patient-Centeredness For Persons Living With Dementia, Nicole Gross, Vivienne Byers, Susi Geiger

Articles

E-health or digital health technologies endeavour to connect key stakeholders and thereby lay the foundation for better integrated as well as potentially more patient-centered care. However, despite the promise of empowerment, efficiency and value, digital health has yet to become part of the daily lives of the people who care for persons living with dementia

Dc And Impedance Sensors Based On Graphene For The Early Detection Of Alzheimer’S Protein Biomarkers, Carrie Jean Haslam

School of Engineering, Computing and Mathematics Theses

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is an irreversible neurodegenerative disorder, responsible for 60-70% of all dementia incidences. Estimates suggest that there are over 47 million people affected by dementia, of which ~65% suffer from AD worldwide, costing the global healthcare system ~$1 trillion annually or over 1% of global GDP. As such, the prevention and management of AD has now become a public health priority. Here five distinctively different biosensing models are reported, explicitly developed for the ultrasensitive and label-free detection of selective biomarkers associated with AD, as well as cancer, using impedance/admittance spectroscopy. The approach based on 4-probe (using direct current …

The Value Of Leadership Practices When There Is No One To Lead: A Nascent Entrepreneurship Context, Lucia Walsh, Bruce Martin

Articles

Although a considerable amount of literature shows how entrepreneurs develop and utilize social capital to create and grow their ventures, there is scant learning on how nascent entrepreneurs with few ties actually create and utilize social capital to help turn their early ideas into ventures. This paper reveals the role of relational leadership in social capital development and shows how it enhances persistence among very early-stage nascent entrepreneurs, even when they have no employees or partners to lead. Learning from our 18-month in-depth case studies of early-stage nascent entrepreneurs in one European country is used to propose a theory of …

Drug Education Best Practice For Health, Community And Youth Workers: A Practical And Accessible Tool-Kit, Clay Darcy

Articles

Objectives Drug education is delivered by a broad spectrum of multi-disciplinary practitioners within the fields of health promotion, drug prevention and treatment, social care, and community and youth work. However, drug education is often misunderstood or conflated with drug information and/or drug prevention. This ambiguity of understanding is problematic and, when coupled with drug education being delivered by practitioners who may not have formal training in drug education, can result in poor delivery, poor participant engagement and poor outcomes. This paper provides conceptual clarity for practitioners on drug education, differentiating it from other approaches to drug issues. Methods The paper …

Tracing Learning Environment In Java Programming Language, Sarah Alhammad

School of Engineering, Computing and Mathematics Theses

The visualisation approach is one of the programming learning styles that has been taken into account in programming education. A collection of visualisation tools has emerged with the aim of assisting novice programmers in learning how to program. Each tool has its own set of features that may or may not be helpful in gaining a better understanding. The methods that we used in this study are focused on using memory referencing and visualisation to clarify what happens during individual program statement executions. Understanding the efficacy of current instructional resources is a critical component of gathering students' requirements and needs …

Submission To The Future Of The Media Commission, Brendan K. O'Rourke, Joseph K. Fitzgerald

Reports

Dr. Brendan K. O’Rourke is a Senior Lecturer at Technological University Dublin, where he focuses on learning in the area of discourses of the economy, in particular examining enterprise, policy and public discourses on the economy. His scholarly work has been widely published as chapters in edited volumes, encyclopedia / handbook entries and in over 20 peer-reviewed academic journals such the Critical Discourse Studies, Politics and Social Semiotics. More information on his work is available on www.brendankorourke.com . Dr. Joseph K. FitzGerald lectures in international strategy at Technological University Dublin and has published on topics such as how young men …

Media Discourses On The Economy In Ireland: Framing The Policy Possibilities, Brendan K. O'Rourke

Books/Book Chapters

Ireland suffered a lot economically in the Great Recession, yet its policies continued on a neoliberal trajectory, making Irish neoliberalism less a non-dead Zombie and more like a reinvigorated Frankenstein’s monster, with ordoliberal transplants from Germany grafted into an Anglo-American neoliberal composite body. Yet along with these continuities come much change. There was political change in party strengths and personnel. There was change in the Irish state’s capacity for policy analysis (MacCarthaigh, 2017) an increase in the number of Ireland’s policy analysts and their specialisms, and an increased stress on evidence-based policy-making. How can we explain both these continuities and …

Developing Non‑Residential Building Stock Archetypes For Lci—A German Case Study Of Office And Administration Buildings, Michael Buschka, Julian Bischoff, Christina Meier-Dotzler, Werner Lang

Articles

To accomplish the national and international climate goals, building renovation and optimisation of their energy and resource efficiency are essential. Thus, reliable information on the building stock (BS) is necessary. Most previous building typologies are focussing on residential buildings and the operational phase. This paper shows the development of a methodology for generating non-residential building (NRB) typologies for life cycle inventory analysis (LCI) of building constructions. Hereby, archetypes of office, administration and department (OAD) buildings are developed, exemplarily for the German NRB stock.

Forward: Teanga, 11(Special Issue 11), Pp. Iii-Xiii, Irene Murtagh, Lorraine Leeson

Articles

Welcome to this special issue of TEANGA, which presents a selection of papers on the linguistics and applied linguistics of Irish Sign Language. This publication is timely, coming in the academic year that celebrates the nineteenth anniversary of the establishment of the Centre for Deaf Studies at Trinity College Dublin (est. 2001), and the year in which when Irish Sign Language Act (2017) is due to formally commence

Infrared Based Saliva Screening Test For Covid-19, Bayden R. Wood, Kamila Kochan, Diana E. Bedolla, Natalia Salazar‐Quiroz, Samantha L. Grimley, David Perezguaita, Matthew J. Baker, Jitraporn Vongsvivut, Mark J. Tobin, Keith R. Bambery, Dale Christensen, Shivani Pasricha, Anthony K. Eden, Aaron Mclean

Articles

Abstract: Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 has resulted in an unprecedented need for diagnostic testing that is critical in controlling the spread of COVID-19. We propose a portable infrared spectrometer with purpose-built transflection accessory for rapid point-of-care detection of COVID-19 markers in saliva. Initially, purified virion particles were characterized with Raman spectroscopy, synchrotron infrared (IR) and AFM-IR. A data set comprising 171 transflection infrared spectra from 29 patients testing positive for SARS-CoV-2 by RT-qPCR and 28 testing negative, was modeled using Monte Carlo Double Cross Validation with 50 randomized test and model sets. The testing sensitivity was 93 % …

Embracing Online Engagement With Undergraduate Supervisors: Collective Perspectives On The Online Pivot, Roisin Donnelly, Yurgos Politis

Journal Articles

The sudden national move to online/remote teaching and learning has presented a unique dual opportunity to explore the strategic value and importance of embracing learning technology toincrease the proportion of the undergraduate (UG) supervision community actively developing their practice. We have delivered a redesigned module as part of an accredited professional development (PD) masters programme, which offers online practices and approaches sought by UG supervisors. This paper proposes an experiential and reflective contribution by educational developers in supporting the PD of UG supervisors. Our aim is to boost institutional informal conversations on UG supervision through formal engagement strategies in the …

Insights From A National Approach To Supporting The Professional Development Of Those Who Teach, Roisin Donnelly

Journal Articles

This Forum Insight focuses on the national Open Courses initiative, established by the National Forum and sectoral colleagues in 2017.

It considers what has been learned from this flexible, innovative approach to supporting the professional development of those who teach across higher and further education.

Sure 2021 Undergraduate Science Conference Booklet, Sure Network

Group Reports

The SURE 2021 Conference was the fourth series of Science Undergraduate Research Experience (SURE) Conferences and second online conference, following earlier face to face series in 2018 (with three conferences in Dublin, Athlone and Waterford) and in 2019 (with three conferences in Dublin, Sligo and Carlow). The 2021 virtual online conference was hosted by Waterford Institute of Technology (WIT), TUS:MM (Athlone Institute of Technology) and Dundalk Institute of Technology (Dundalk IT) and featured 23 oral presentations and 48 poster presentations across three thematic streams/break out rooms on zoom. An interactive virtual poster session took place using …

Detecting Interlocutor Confusion In Situated Human-Avatar Dialogue: A Pilot Study, Na Li, John D. Kelleher, Robert J. Ross

Conference papers

In order to enhance levels of engagement with conversational systems, our long term research goal seeks to monitor the confusion state of a user and adapt dialogue policies in response to such user confusion states. To this end, in this paper, we present our initial research centred on a user-avatar dialogue scenario that we have developed to study the manifestation of confusion and in the long term its mitigation. We present a new definition of confusion that is particularly tailored to the requirements of intelligent conversational system development for task-oriented dialogue. We also present the details of our Wizard-of-Oz based …

Virtual Tutor Personality In Computer Assisted Language Learning, Johanna Dobbriner, Cathy Ennis, Robert J. Ross

Conference papers

The use of intelligent virtual agents in language learning has increased in recent years. Studies into several aspects of personalisation aiming to increase user engagement are an ongoing research topic with avatar personality being one such aspect. As a step towards our development of intelligent virtual avatars, we present two of our initial experiments to explore differences in user interaction with two contrasting avatar personalities -- P1: open-minded, friendly and sociable and P2: closed-off, curt and distant. Each user interacted with a single personality in a video-call setting and gave feedback on the interaction. Our expectations, that P1 would be …

Just-In-Time Biomass Yield Estimation With Multi-Modal Data And Variable Patch Training Size, Patricia O'Byrne, Patrick Jackman Dr., Damon Dr. Berry Dr., Thomas Lee, Michael French, Robert J. Ross

Conference papers

The just-in-time estimation of farmland traits such as biomass yield can aid considerably in the optimisation of agricultural processes. Data in domains such as precision farming is however notoriously expensive to collect and deep learning driven modelling approaches need to maximise performance but also acknowledge this reality. In this paper we present a study in which a platform was deployed to collect data from a heterogeneous collection of sensor types including visual, NIR, and LiDAR sources to estimate key pastureland traits. In addition to introducing the study itself we address two key research questions. The first of these was the …

Guanxi 2.0: Social Capital Within A Cultural Context Revealed By The Use Of Social Media By Chinese International Students, Xu Zhang

School of Art, Design and Architecture Theses

The group of Chinese overseas students has become a very important part of the cross-border communication group. The number of Chinese students studying in the UK continues to increase. For foreign students from other countries, constructing a new social network is a key step for them to obtain necessary help and support to carry out their new study and life. This thesis takes Chinese international students studying at the University of Plymouth in the United Kingdom as an example, using the ethnographic research methods of participatory observation and in-depth interviews to explore the process of Chinese international students building their …

Assessment Of Oral Language And Early Literacy In Early Childhood Education And Care: Literature Review, Danielle Anzai, Sandra Knowles, Dan Cloney, Pam Munro-Smith, Pru Mitchell

Early Childhood Education

This literature review is one of a series of reviews to support Victorian early childhood professionals to assess children's learning and development in relation to the five Learning and Development Outcomes in the Victorian Early Years Learning and Development Framework (VEYLDF). This review focuses on the Outcome: Children are effective communicators, and specifically on children as effective oral communicators. Focusing on the development of oral language and early literacy in the early years, this literature review sets out to provide a resource that will equip early childhood professionals with the knowledge to identify and assess children's progress in oral language …

Let's Talk About Ditching Plastics At Festivals, Ellen Foley

Case Studies

Student blog series from MSc in Event Management students at TU Dublin. In this blog post Ellen Foley asks is it time to stop using plastic at festivals. She discusses how how Education and collaboration are the two vital ingredients that festival planners must embrace in order to tackle this ever-pressing problem. It’s time to get creative and work together to ditch the plastic.