National University of Ireland, Maynooth
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The selection advantages associated with advanced biological maturation vary according to playing position in national-level youth soccer
No full textThis study investigated the extent to which biological maturation selection biases existed according to playing position in national-level youth soccer. A total of 159 players from the U13 to U16 age groups in the Football Association of Ireland's national talent pathway and international representative squads had their relative biological maturity status assessed using the Khamis-Roche method for the percentage of predicted adult height at the time of observation. Players were categorised as goalkeeper (GK), central defender (CD), full-back (FB), centre defensive midfielder (CDM), centre midfielder (CM), centre attacking midfielder (CAM), wide midfielder (WM) or centre forward (CF). A series of one-sampled means t-tests were used to examine the degree to which biological maturation selection biases existed across playing positions. A non-parametric Kruskal-Wallis test was used to evaluate inter-positional differences. A small to very large selection bias in favour of early maturing players existed for GK (D = 0.7), CD (D = 1.65), FB (D = 0.49), CM (D = 0.62), WM (D = 0.78), and CF (D = 0.76) (p < 0.05). Maturational selection biases did not exist for CDM or CAM. Moreover, CD were significantly more advanced in maturation compared to FB, CDM and CAM (p < 0.05). This study supports the contention that maturation selection biases exist in youth soccer, but the magnitude of this bias is highly dependent upon playing position. The very strong maturity selection biases at the national level evidenced in this investigation highlight the need for Football Associations to explore strategies, such as futures programmes, to help to retain talented, yet late maturing athletes
Supporting student teachers’ enactment of relational mathematics in the classroom: an Action Research study
No full textThe problem of enactment describes a teacher’s inability to translate effective theories of teaching into practice. This is common for student-teachers, and invariably results in instructional practices that are ineffective and inconsistent with their beliefs. The motivation for this study was based on the observation that student-teachers move away from practices linked to relational understanding of mathematics and regularly fail to enact their mathematical knowledge in the classroom, despite having proven competence in the area. Therefore, the objective was to understand the reasons for this failure and make subsequent changes in the designated module to address the problem of enactment. Action Research was chosen as the research design considering the changes into one’s practice and subsequently evaluating those changes. The current study represents Cycle 1 of a larger two-cycle Action Research study. Qualitative data were gathered from student-teachers using focusgroups and classroom observations and analysed using Braun &Clarkes (2006) thematic analysis and the Mathematical Quality of Instruction framework, respectively. The findings indicated that the intervention was effective in addressing the problem of enactment, but further changes needed to be made in Cycle 2 to ensure it meets the needs of student-teachers and the pupils they teach
Care Matters in Higher Education: A Narrative Inquiry with a Community of Educators in a Technological University
No full textThis is a story about care in higher education, documenting a group of colleagues in a Technological University, as we engaged in a narrative inquiry. It explores how we might sustain educators who care and our care-based pedagogies: asking, how can we keep care at the centre of what we do and who we are?
Care is embedded in relationships, and it is in relation that we see care in the storied accounts in this thesis. Our collegial approach and our ‘climate of care’ encourages us to teach in a care-centred way. Our supportive professional relationships provide an essential space for each other and for care. It is these ‘pockets of care’ within our institutions, that enable us to sustain care.
As this inquiry attests, we are increasingly negatively affected by neoliberalism in our institutions. The troubling dismantling of our climate of care is revealed as our inquiry unfolds. This research makes care work in the academy more visible and offers the possibility that it may therefore become more valued by our institutions (and less easy to dismiss). Our stories suggest that re-centralising care into our concept of higher education can potentially be a powerful corrective to neoliberalism. Our pedagogies and our way of working together can be viewed as a form of resistance or refusal. This focusses on the agency we have as educators and is a means of giving us hope to keep caring.
In this inquiry, care is demonstrated as an ontological commitment to our students and our colleagues. Care is not an individual pursuit, it is an understanding of the interconnectedness of self and others, and personal and social concerns. We care together, and the stories contained here, speak of care as a collective process. Drawing on the resonances across my participants accounts, I conceptualise presence as the cornerstone of a care-centred pedagogy. With mutual respect at its core, we are present to our students, both emotionally and cognitively, responding competently to their learning needs.
This inquiry offers a cautionary tale to institutions; that care is fragile and can be easily lost, if not valued and recognised as an essential element of third-level education. Care matters
Curiosity-Driven, Inquiry-Based Science Projects Bridge Face-to-Face and Online Learning Formats During COVID-19: A Teachers
No full textThe mass closure of schools as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic paralyzed many children’s education. Teachers across the globe did their best to engage students
and help support their learning through online educational formats. However, teachers and parents indicated that students' struggled with these approaches. This
study aims to build on successes some science teachers had using curiosity as a starting point in inquiry-based science projects that bridged face-to-face and online
learning formats. This year-long qualitative, participatory action research study brings together fourteen teachers (seven elementary and seven secondary) and four university faculty using an online community of inquiry framework. This work is in its early stages. Through two cycles of planning, implementation and reflection, the community of inquiry will ultimately develop a model for best practices and resources that respond to the educational challenges faced during the pandemic and help prepare teachers for future crises. These materials will be shared with other teachers as open education resources, that are freely accessible, digital, re-mixable and revisable. This work will also contribute to theory regarding best practices for curiosity-driven, inquiry-based science education in blended learning spaces
Smooth Structures on Spheres
No full textWe provide an account of Milnor's construction of an exotic 7-sphere and the subsequent
rapid development of differential topology used to produce and classify exotic manifolds.
We begin by giving some necessary background, assuming only previous knowledge of real
analysis and linear algebra. Smooth manifolds, vector bundles, and fibre bundles are introduced,
along with some operations on manifolds not usually seen in a first course, before
giving a review of all necessary algebraic topology. We pay particular attention to the homology
of smooth manifolds, as this will form the basis for the constructions of the following
section. We then introduce characteristic classes, which are one of the main ingredients
in constructing smooth manifold invariants. Using this setup, we develop Milnor's original
smooth invariant and a generalisation of it to a wider class of manifolds. We give a brief
introduction to Morse theory, which we use to characterise topological spheres. Having set
up the necessary background, we construct a number of examples of exotic spheres. We first
present Milnor's original example, and then develop a more general tool, plumbing disk bundles,
to give a much larger class of examples. Finally, we turn to the classiffication of smooth
structures on spheres of dimension greater than four, developing the necessary background
to state Milnor and Kervaire's classiffication results on homotopy groups of spheres, before
indicating a number of future directions of study to the reader, as this thesis is ultimately
intended to be an introduction to a vast field
Psychological Distress and Loneliness among New Fathers During the Peripartum Period: The Roles of Perceived Stress and Social Support
No full textAim: The aim of this study was to explore fathers’ mental health during the peripartum period, how stress contributed to psychological distress and loneliness and the ways in which social support moderated these outcomes. Method: This research used a convergent mixed methods design. Both quantitative and qualitative data were collected. In the quantitative strand, The Cohen Perceived Stress Scale, The Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale, The DeJong Gierveld Loneliness Scale and The Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support were administered during the third trimester of the prepartum period and again at 3 and 6 months postpartum. Data was collected across 3 waves from February 2021 until October 2021. A total of 91 fathers participated at wave 1, 50 fathers participated at wave 2, and 24 fathers participated at wave 3. In the qualitative strand, one-to-one semi structured interviews were conducted to explore fathers’ experiences with postpartum social support and loneliness. Data was collected from 12 fathers from April 2021 until July 2022. Results: The quantitative strand of this study found 1) social support did not significantly moderate the relationship between perceived stress and psychological distress and 2) social support did not significantly moderate the relationship between perceived stress and loneliness during the third trimester of the prepartum period. However, at three months postpartum, social support did significantly moderate the relationship between perceived stress and loneliness. Upon analysing interview transcripts, three key themes were drawn from the data (i) Being the breadwinner (ii) Seeking postpartum social support and (iii) Feeling lonely when lacking postpartum support. Conclusions: Both strands of this research highlight the potential buffering role of social support on the relationship between postpartum stress and loneliness. It is important to target low partner support, low support from family, friends and from other fathers as potentially modifiable factors for peripartum loneliness interventions
Education Can’t Wait for LGBTIQ Refugees? Exploring Inclusion and Access to Higher Education in Kakuma Refugee Camp.
No full textEnabling access to, and reaping the benefits of, higher education in refugee camps, while not an easy task for any refugee, is, for the most part, out of reach for the most vulnerable ones who experience multiple and often intersecting layers of discrimination (Walton et al. 2020). The lesbian, gay, transgender, intersex, and queer (LGBTIQ) “community”Footnote1 in Kakuma refugee camp is the case in point. LGBTIQ refugees and asylum seekers have a long experience of discrimination in Kakuma refugee camp (Zomorodi 2016; NGLHRC 2016), where the authors have been running higher education courses for the last five years. Even though Kenya is the only country in the region to permit asylum seekers to be recognized as refugees on the basis of their sexual orientation and gender identity, LGBTIQ refugees in Kakuma suffer multiple layers of prejudices from fellow refugees, the host community, national police, and international organizations (Pincock 2020; NGLHRC 2016). In a context where homosexual acts are criminalized (Kenya Penal Code, Section 162 (a) and (c), Section 163, Section 165) and given the severe lack of learning infrastructure (such as adequate learning technology and safe learning spaces) and limited resources, these refugees have very limited access to the few higher education opportunities that other refugees might have
Investigating the effects of glyphosate on the bumblebee proteome and microbiota
No full textGlyphosate is one of the most widely used herbicides globally. It acts by inhibiting an enzyme in an aromatic amino acid synthesis pathway specific to plants and microbes, leading to the view that it poses no risk to other organisms. However, there is growing concern that glyphosate is associated with health effects in humans and an ever-increasing body of evidence that suggests potential deleterious effects on other animals including pollinating insects such as bees. Although pesticides have long been considered a factor in the decline of wild bee populations, most research on bees has focussed on demonstrating and understanding the effects of insecticides. To assess whether glyphosate poses a risk to bees, we characterised changes in survival, behaviour, sucrose solution consumption, the digestive tract proteome, and the microbiota in the bumblebee Bombus terrestris after chronic exposure to field relevant doses of technical grade glyphosate or the glyphosate-based formulation, RoundUp Optima+®. Regardless of source, there were changes in response to glyphosate exposure in important cellular and physiological processes in the digestive tract of B. terrestris, with proteins associated with oxidative stress regulation, metabolism, cellular adhesion, the extracellular matrix, and various signalling pathways altered. Interestingly, proteins associated with endocytosis, oxidative phosphorylation, the TCA cycle, and carbohydrate, lipid, and amino acid metabolism were differentially altered depending on whether the exposure source was glyphosate alone or RoundUp Optima+®. In addition, there were alterations to the digestive tract microbiota of bees depending on the glyphosate source No impacts on survival, behaviour, or food consumption were observed. Our research provides insights into the potential mode of action and consequences of glyphosate exposure at the molecular, cellular and organismal level in bumblebees and highlights issues with the current honeybee-centric risk assessment of pesticides and their formulations, where the impact of co-formulants on non-target organisms are generally overlooked
Low-temperature exposure has immediate and lasting effects on the stress tolerance, chemotaxis and proteome of entomopathogenic nematodes
No full textTemperature is one of the most important factors affecting soil organisms, including the infective stages of parasites and entomopathogenic nematodes, which are important biological control agents. We investigated the response of 2 species of entomopathogenic nematodes to different storage regimes: cold (9°C), culture temperature (20°C) and temperature swapped from 9 to 20°C. For Steinernema carpocapsae, cold storage had profound effects on chemotaxis, stress tolerance and protein expression that were retained in temperature-swapped individuals. These effects included reversal of chemotactic response for 3 (prenol, methyl salicylate and hexanol) of the 4 chemicals tested, and enhanced tolerance to freezing (−10°C) and desiccation (75% RH). Label-free quantitative proteomics showed that cold storage induced widespread changes in S. carpocapsae, including an increase in heat-shock proteins and late embryogenesis abundant proteins. For Heterorhabditis megidis, cold storage had a less dramatic effect on chemotaxis (as previously shown for proteomic expression) and changes were not maintained on return to 20°C. Thus, cold temperature exposure has significant effects on entomopathogenic nematodes, but the nature of the change depends on the species. Steinernema carpocapsae, in particular, displays significant plasticity, and its behaviour and stress tolerance may be manipulated by brief exposure to low temperatures, with implications for its use as a biological control agent
Multidisciplinary and multi sector lighthouses | case studies | Deliverable D2.2
No full textRES4CITY is a 36-month project funded by the European Commission, initiated in October 2022. Its primary objective is to advance the development of sustainable renewables and fuel technologies within cities. This is achieved by collaborative efforts in designing innovative educational micro-programmes involving various stakeholders. The project also emphasizes the promotion of sustainability and circularity, bridging the knowledge and skills gaps essential for a successful energy transition.
This deliverable, designated as D.2.2 RES4CITY multidisciplinary and multi sector lighthouses, is developed under task T2.2 Lighthouse case studies development of the RES4CITY project during M12 (September 2023). Task T2.2 builds upon the energy-related urban challenges identified in T2.1 Innovative sustainable strategies for carbon neutral smart cities. In essence, task T2.2 focuses on creating lighthouse case studies that address these identified challenges. To ensure a comprehensive and effective approach, task T2.2 collaborates closely with task T3.2, actively engaging the community of stakeholders. The culmination of these collaborative efforts results in the production of pre-feasibility analyses tailored to the specific urban context under consideration.
The document comprises three chapters. The first chapter introduces task T2.2, which involved the development of ten lighthouse case studies by project partners, along with their corresponding HUBs. This chapter describes the approach to ensuring clarity and enhancing reader comprehension, thereby amplifying the impact and dissemination of these case studies. To achieve this, the case studies followed a predefined template designed with a structure like that of a scientific article. This structure encompasses not only an introductory section addressing the challenge under scrutiny and introducing the case study but also includes sections dedicated to presenting results, recommendations, and conclusions.
In the second chapter, the ten lighthouse case studies are compiled and presented individually. This set of lighthouse case studies contributes to fulfilling the RES4CITY’s Milestone 11 Lighthouse available for case study education. Each case study is accompanied by an executive summary, which complements the existing Abstract and Graphical Abstract elements that are part of the case study structure. The objective of creating this executive summary is to provide an additional resource that can be examined independently of the complete case study. Its purpose is to facilitate an understanding of the subject matter and the case study itself while highlighting key results and conclusions. This approach enables the case studies to be used independently. Within the framework of this Deliverable, the executive summary serves as tool for readers to grasp the key points of each case study swiftly and concisely. This empowers readers to determine, based on their interests and requirements, whether they want to delve deeper into the individual case studies for more detailed analysis.
In the third and concluding chapter, each lighthouse case study developed by the project partners is presented in a straightforward and concise manner. Furthermore, this chapter highlights key concluding remarques derived from each of the case studies. Lastly, it emphasizes the dual purposes for which these case studies were developed: as learning tools in the RES4CITY learning and upskilling programs and as multipliers for replication in other contexts.
The Deliverable 2.2 was concluded and submitted in September 2023 by (UCOI) with the support of the partners listed in Table 1