Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

An Investigation Into The Design, Development And Testing Of A Tool To Improve The Accessibility Of Access Information For People With Disabilities, Susan Codd

Masters

Independent access for all to the built environment is one of the most basic of human rights. It provides social inclusion, integration and acceptance in communities. People with disabilities often encounter barriers to such access, barriers that can discriminate and marginalise to the extent that it prohibits independent living. Visiting the built environment becomes a lottery whereby inaccessible features may be present around every corner. People with disabilities deserve more than operating on a system of chance; they require a tool to make an informed decision prior to embarking on a journey. However in order to provide such information three …

On The Applications Of Deterministic Chaos For Encrypting Data On The Cloud, Jonathan Blackledge, Nikolai Ptitsyn

Conference papers

Cloud computing is expected to grow considerably in the future because it has so many advantages with regard to sale and cost, change management, next generation architectures, choice and agility. However, one of the principal concerns for users of the Cloud is lack of control and above all, data security. This paper considers an approach to encrypting information before it is ‘placed’ on the Cloud where each user has access to their own encryption algorithm, an algorithm that is based on a set of iterated function systems that outputs a chaotic number stream, designed to produce a cryptographically secure cipher. …

Currency Trading Using The Fractal Market Hypothesis, Jonathan Blackledge, Kieran Murphy

Articles

We report on a research and development programme in financial modelling and economic security undertaken in the Information and Communications Security Research Group (ICSRG, 2011) which has led to the launch of a new company - Currency Traders Ireland Limited - funded by Enterprise Ireland. Currency Traders Ireland Limited (CTI, 2011) has a fifty year exclusive license to develop a new set of indicators for analysing currency exchange rates (Forex trading). We consider the background to the approach taken and present examples of the results obtained to date.

An Online Framework For Supporting The Evaluation Of Personalised Information Retrieval Systems, Catherine Mulwa, Luca Longo, Seamus Lawless, Mary Sharpe, Vincent Wade

Conference papers

Scope - Personalised Information Retrieval (PIR) has been gaining attention because it investigates intelligent ways for enhancing content delivery. Web users can have personalised services and more accurate information. Problem - Several PIR systems have been proposed in the literature; however, they have not been properly tested or evaluated. Proposal – The authors propose a generally applicable web-based interface, which provides PIR developers and evaluators with: i) implicit recommendations on how to evaluate a specific PIR system; ii) a repository containing studies on user-centred and layered evaluation studies; iii) recommendations on how to best combine different evaluation methods, metrics and …

An Event-Based Approach To Describing And Understanding Museum Narratives, Paul Mulholland, Annika Wolff, Trevor Collins, Zdenek Zdrahal

Publications

Current museum metadata tends to be focused around the properties of the heritage object such as the artist, style and date of creation. This form of metadata can index a museum’s collection but cannot express the relations between heritage objects and related concepts found in contemporary museum exhibitions. A modern museum exhibition, rather than providing a taxonomic classification of heritage objects, uses them in the construction of curatorial narratives to be interpreted by an audience. In this paper we outline how curatorial narratives can be represented semantically using our Curate Ontology. The Curate Ontology, informed by a detailed analysis of …

Locating Mineral Exploration Targets Using A Geographical Information System, Finnian O'Connor

Conference papers

This paper outlines the research and development of a complete open source geographic information system (GIS) that offers real-time geoprocessing over the Internet. The premise of the geoprocessing is to locate mineral exploration targets that have high potential for success based on parameters chosen by the end-user of the system.

Components integrated in the system include a spatial database PostGIS, a GIS processing engine GRASS, a GIS server GeoServer, a web server Apache, and front-end technologies OpenLayers and GeoExt. Appropriate data was sourced from the Geological Survey of Ireland to be used for the geoprocessing.

With all the components of …

Feasibility Study Of Utility-Directed Behaviour For Computer Game Agents, Colm Sloan, John D. Kelleher, Brian Mac Namee

Conference papers

Utility-based control (UBC) hasn’t been widely adopted for commercial game AI. Some of the reasons for this are that UBC is perceived to be: (1) resource intensive, (2) difficult to design complex behaviours with, and (3) difficult to scale for use in complex environments. This paper investigates these perceptions to see if UBC is suitable for controlling the behaviour of non-player characters in commercial games. The investigation compares agents using a UBC system against two control systems that are more frequently used in commercial games: finite state machines (FSMs), considered a simple control system, and goal-oriented action planning (GOAP), considered …

Synthesis And Characterisation Of Macrocycles Containing Both Tetrazole And Pyridine Functionalities, Adrienne Fleming, Jackie Gaire, Fintan Kelleher, John Mcginley, Vickie Mckee

Articles

The syntheses of tetra-tetrazole macrocycles containing at least one 2,6-bis(tetrazole)pyridine unit, linked by a variety of n-alkyl (n = 3, 5, 7 or 9 carbon atoms) chain lengths, are described. There has been no previous incorporation of the pyridine moiety into a tetra-tetrazolophane macrocycle. The crystal structure of one such tetra-tetrazole macrocycle has also been structurally characterised and revealed a bowl-shaped conformation.

Synthesis, Co-Polymerisation And Electrochemical Evaluation Of Novel Ferrocene-Pyrrole Derivatives, Mary Deasy, Eithne Dempsey, Geok Hong Soon, Oliver Worsfold

Articles

New ferrocene derivatives, ((4-(1H-pyrrol-1-yl)phenoxy)carbonyl) ferrocene (4) and (6-(4-(1H-pyrrol-1-yl)phenoxy)hexyl) ferrocene (7) were synthesised, characterised and electrochemically evaluated as redox active films formed via anodic oxidation with pyrrole. Thin film studies were conducted and films formed from both compounds resulted in a stable Fe ^II/III redox couple with E^o = 0.04V and 0.36V vs. Ag/Ag⁺ for (7) and (4) respectively. Both potential sweeping and chronocoulometry were employed for film formation with the former resulting in controllable, reproducible film deposition. Growth conditions and solution concentrations were varied in the case of both compounds in order to assess …

The Potential For Indicators In The Management Of Climate Change Impacts On Cultural Heritage, Caithleen Daly

Conference papers

The global scale and unpredictable nature of climate change impacts on cultural heritage poses a challenge for conservation management. This article explores the potential of indicators as an aid for decision makers in the heritage sector. The author proposes a new indicator tool for addressing long-term stone recession impacts that may be related to climate change. The indicator is being installed at two World Heritage sites in Ireland but no results are available. The prototype was developed during doctoral research at the Technological University of Dublin.

Nanoparticle Doped Photopolymer With Reduced Shrinkage For Holographic Recording, Mohesh Moothanchery, Svetlana Mintova, Izabela Naydenova, Vincent Toal

Conference Papers

We demonstrate holographic recording with Si-MFI zeolite doped acrylamide based photopolymerfilm. The influence of silicate nanoparticles on photopolymer shrinkage has been studied and compared withshrinkage in undoped photopolymer layers The shrinkage of the material (1.03%) is significantly lower forrecording in Si-MFI zeolite nanoparticle doped samples than for undoped layers (1.77%).

Mobile Visibility Querying For Lbs, James Carswell, Keith Gardiner, Junjun Jin

Articles

This article describes research carried out in the area of mobile spatial interaction (MSI) and the development of a 3D mobile version of a 2D web-based directional query processor. The TellMe application integrates location (from GPS, GSM, WiFi) and orientation (from magnetometer/accelerometer) sensor technologies into an enhanced spatial query processing module capable of exploiting a mobile device’s position and orientation for querying real-world spatial datasets. This article outlines our technique for combining these technologies and the architecture needed to deploy them on a sensor enabled smartphone (i.e. Nokia Navigator 6210). With all these sensor technologies now available on off-the-shelf devices, …

Development And Validation Of A Rapid Multi-Class Method For The Confirmation Of Fourteen Prohibited Medicinal Additives In Pig And Poultry Compound Feed By Liquid Chromatography Tandem Mass Spectrometry, Mark Cronly, Patrice Behan, Barry Foley, Liam Regan, Marella Gallagher, Sean Earley, Paula Shearan, Edward Malone

Articles

A confirmatory method has been developed to allow for the analysis of fourteen prohibited medicinal additives in pig and poultry compound feed. These compounds are prohibited for use as feed additives although some are still authorised for use in medicated feed. Feed samples are extracted by acetonitrile with addition of sodium sulphate. The extracts undergo a hexane wash to aid with sample purification. The extracts are then evaporated to dryness and reconstituted in initial mobile phase. The samples undergo an ultracentrifugation step prior to injection onto the LC-MS/MS system and are analysed in a run time of 26 minutes. The …

Hexakis(Prop-2-Enamide)Copper(Ii) Bis(Perchlorate) And Hexakis(Prop-2- Enamide)Manganese(Ii) Bis(Perchlorate), Mary Mcnamara, Andrew Kellett, Georgina Rosair, Michael Devereux, Malachy Mccann

Articles

The structures of [Cu(AA)6](ClO4)2, (I), and [Mn(AA)6](ClO4)2, (II) (AA is acrylamide, also known as prop-2-enamide; C3H5NO), display both intra- and intermolecular N-H...O hydrogen bonding. A three-dimensional network is propagated via the perchlorate counter-ions. There are two crystallographically independent molecules in the copper complex, with the most significant difference between them being the conformation of one symmetry-related pair of AA ligands which are in the unusual syn conformation. The copper complex exhibits syn/anti disorder of the =CH2 group in one pair of symmetry-related AA ligands. The CuII and MnII centres are both situated on centres of inversion. The copper complex cation …

Interactions Of Carbon Nanotubes With Human Lung Epithelial Cells In Vitro, Assessed By Raman Spectroscopy, Peter Knief

Doctoral

Current methods for the evaluation of cellular interactions with nanoparticles are non-specific, relatively slow and invasive to the cell. Raman spectroscopy is a non invasive technique whose potential in the biosciences has already been demonstrated and has been used in the investigation of cell interactions with various external agents. The main focus of this study is to employ Raman spectroscopy to investigate the interaction of A549 human lung cells with single walled carbon nanotubes. · Carbon nanotubes have attracted considerable interest not only for their outstanding physical and electronic properties, promising a potentially vast number of applications, but also for …

Development Of Acrylamide Based Photopolymer For Full Colour Display Holography, Chakrapani Meka

Doctoral

Holography is a firmly established discipline that can be used as a tool for scientific and engineering studies and as a display medium as well. Until now both silver halide photographic emulsions (SHPE) and dichromated gelatine (DCG) have been the most common materials used for high efficiency full colour reflection hologram recording. However, these materials require wet chemical processing for developing the holograms which is laborious and costly from the point of view of commercial applications. Self-developing photopolymers such as acrylamide based photopolymer (ABP) which do not require development are the ideal choice for real-time recording and reconstruction of holograms. …

Solar Radiation Damage To Human Skin Mitochondria, Luciene Zanchetta

Doctoral

The central objective of this study was to assess solar radiation-induced changes in cellular function, mitochondrial function and mitochondrial DNA to further investigate the role of these energy-dedicated and metabolically essential organelles in the response to the main environmental stressor associated with skin cancer initiation. An in vitro approach was chosen employing the human malignant melanoma (A375) and human amelanotic melanoma (C32) cells and the human spontaneously immortalized keratinocytes (HaCaT). A Q-Sun Solar Simulator was used to expose cells to low-level simulated solar radiation (SSR) as it provides a mimic of solar radiation that is environmentally relevant in the UV …

Visual Salience And Reference Resolution In Situated Dialogues: A Corpus-Based Evaluation., Niels Schütte, John D. Kelleher, Brian Mac Namee

Conference papers

Dialogues between humans and robots are necessarily situated and so, often, a shared visual context is present. Exophoric references are very frequent in situated dialogues, and are particularly important in the presence of a shared visual context - for example when a human is verbally guiding a tele-operated mobile robot. We present an approach to automatically resolving exophoric referring expressions in a situated dialogue based on the visual salience of possible referents. We evaluate the effectiveness of this approach and a range of different salience metrics using data from the SCARE corpus which we have augmented with visual information. The …

Situating Spatial Templates For Human-Robot Interaction, John D. Kelleher, Robert J. Ross, Brian Mac Namee, Colm Sloan

Conference papers

People often refer to objects by describing the object's spatial location relative to another object. Due to their ubiquity in situated discourse, the ability to use 'locative expressions' is fundamental to human-robot dialogue systems. A key component of this ability are computational models of spatial term semantics. These models bridge the grounding gap between spatial language and sensor data. Within the Artificial Intelligence and Robotics communities, spatial template based accounts, such as the Attention Vector Sum model (Regier and Carlson, 2001), have found considerable application in mediating situated human-machine communication (Gorniak, 2004; Brenner et a., 2007; Kelleher and Costello, 2009). …

Extended Green-Liouville Asymptotics And Vacuum Polarization For Lukewarm Black Holes, Cormac Breen, Adrian Ottewill

Articles

We consider a quantum field on a lukewarm black hole spacetime. We introduce a new uniform approximation to the radial equation, constructed using an extension of Green-Liouville asymptotics. We then use this new approximation to construct the renormalized vacuum polarization in the Hartle-Hawking vacuum. Previous calculations of the vacuum polarization rely on the WKB approximation to the solutions of the radial equation, however the nonuniformity of the WKB approximations obscures the results of these calculations near both horizons. The use of our new approximation eliminates these obscurities, enabling us to obtain explicitly finite and easily calculable values of the vacuum …

A Framework For The Comparison Of Virtual Classroom Systems, Daniel Mcsweeney

Conference Papers

The increase in demand for open and distance learning has resulted in many higher education providers investing in virtual classroom systems. These systems can be an essential component in the delivery of flexible and online courses. While many institutions correctly place a greater emphasis on the pedagogical development of flexible courses, poor selection or implementation of virtual classroom software can reduce the pedagogical effectiveness of such courses and in some cases render them unworkable for both lecturing staff and students.

Changes in vendor offerings, the continual evolution of end user technology, developments in mobile devices and improvements in internet infrastructure …

Application Of The Fractional Diffusion Equation For Predicting Market Behaviour, Jonathan Blackledge

Articles

Most Financial modelling system rely on an underlying hypothesis known as the Eficient Market Hypothesi (EMH) including the famous BlackScholes formula for placing an option. However, the EMH has a fundamental flaw: it is based on the assumption that economic processes are normally distributed and it has long been known that this is not the case. This fundamental assumption leads to a number of shortcomings associated with using the EMH to analyse financial data which includes failure to predict the future volatility of a market share value. This paper introduces a new financial risk assessment model based on Levy statistics …

Determination Of Threshold Exposure And Intensity For Recording Holograms In Thick Green-Sensitive Acrylamide-Based Photopolymer, Mohammad Sultan Mahmud, Izabela Naydenova, Tzwetanka Bebeva, Raghavendra Jallapuram, Suzanne Martin, Vincent Toal

Articles

For optical data storage applications, it is essential to determine the lowest intensity (also known as threshold intensity) below or at which no data page or grating can be recorded in the photosensitive material, as this in turn determines the data capacity of the material. Here, experiments were carried out to determine the threshold intensity below which the formation of a simple hologram—a holographic diffraction grating in a green-sensitized acrylamide-based photopolymer—is not possible. Two main parameters of the recording layers—dye concentration and thickness—were varied to study the influence of the density of the generated free radicals on the holographic properties …

Suitability Review Of Common Synchronous, Live Online-Classroom Tools, Arnold Hensman

Conference Papers

While virtual learning environments (VLEs) such as Moodle and WebCT are now ubiquitous in most higher education institutes, live synchronous virtual classroom software is merely gaining in popularity. The first online meeting tools were tailored towards business requirements for remotely held meetings rather than educational purposes. The recent expansion of virtual classroom tools specific to education has changed this. Such software offers the standard features of streamed voice and video, yet purposely provides an array of additional features specifically designed to conduct classes online. While VLEs work optimally as a compliment to standard courses, Virtual-classrooms such as Adobe Connect Pro …

An Explicit Super‐Time‐Stepping Scheme For Non‐Symmetric Parabolic Problems, Stephen O'Sullivan, Katharine Gurski

Conference papers

Explicit numerical methods for the solution of a system of differential equations may suffer from a time step size that approaches zero in order to satisfy stability conditions. When the differential equations are dominated by a skew-symmetric component, the problem is that the real eigenvalues are dominated by imaginary eigenvalues. We compare results for stable time step limits for the super-time-stepping method of Alexiades, Amiez, and Gremaud (super-time-stepping methods belong to the Runge-Kutta-Chebyshev class) and a new method modeled on a predictor-corrector scheme with multiplicative operator splitting. This new explicit method increases stability of the original super-time-stepping whenever the skew-symmetric …

Relativistic Particle Acceleration In Tangled Magnetic Fields, Stephen O'Sullivan, Brian Reville, Andrew Taylor

Conference papers

We present simulations of the transport of fast particles through three-dimensional turbulent magnetic field configurations. A time dependency is imposed on the plane wave modes used in constructing these fields such than acceleration via the second-order Fermi process is possible. We consider simulations of models with low and high turbulence levels for non-relativistic waves. The predictions of quasi-linear theory are discussed with respect to the simulation data. We conclude that for pure stochastic acceleration via Alfvén waves to be plausible as the generator of UHECR in Cen A, the baryon number density would need to be several orders of magnitude …

Investigating Ultrasonic Positioning On Mobile Phones, Viacheslav Filonenko, Charlie Cullen, James Carswell

Conference papers

In this paper we evaluate the innate ability of mobile phone speakers to produce ultrasound and the possible uses of this ability for accurate indoor positioning. The frequencies in question are a range between 20 and 22 KHz, which is high enough to be inaudible but low enough to be generated by standard sound hardware. A range of tones is generated at different volume settings on several popular modern mobile phones with the aim of finding points of failure. Our results indicate that it is possible to generate the given range of frequencies without significant distortions, provided the signal volume …

Cloud Computing:Strategies For Cloud Computing Adoption, Faith Shimba

Dissertations

The advent of cloud computing in recent years has sparked an interest from different organisations, institutions and users to take advantage of web applications. This is a result of the new economic model for the Information Technology (IT) department that cloud computing promises. The model promises a shift from an organisation required to invest heavily for limited IT resources that are internally managed, to a model where the organisation can buy or rent resources that are managed by a cloud provider, and pay per use. Cloud computing also promises scalability of resources and on-demand availability of resources.

Although, the adoption …

A Risk Assessment Based Model For Assessing The Environmental Sustainability Of Tourism And Recreation Areas, Peter Roe

Doctoral

Assessing the environmental quality of tourism and recreation areas is considered fundamental to the sustainable management of these resources. However, existing methodologies for such assessments rely on sets of environmental data that are often poorly linked and difficult to interpret and integrate in a holistic manner. Risk assessment is a concept that has developed to the point where it has the potential to address current limitations in environmental assessment methodologies. This thesis presents a new model for the application of risk assessment to the management and assessment of environmental sustainability in the tourism and recreation sector. This model was applied …

Sol-Gel Synthesis And Characterisation Of Novel Metal Oxide Nanomaterials For Photocatalytic Applications, Nicholas T. Nolan

Doctoral

This thesis presents a study of the effect of chemical modifiers and dopants on both the anatase to rutile transformation and also the photocatalytic efficiency of semiconductor nanomaterials. The main focus of the work is based on the crystallisation and phase transformation of the widely investigated semiconductor metal oxide, titanium dioxide (TiO2) Of the three polymorphs associated with titanium dioxide, anatase is widely regarded as the most effective photocatalyst. Typically anatase will transform to rutile in the temperature range 600 – 700 °C however, modification of a titanium precursor with a chelating agent can result in extended transformation temperature. The …