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Landscapes of kingship in early medieval Ireland, AD 400–1150
No full textThis book represents the first interdisciplinary study of early Irish kingship. Kingship represents the core institution and central problem of early medieval Ireland and its study, but to date has mainly been analyzed through documentary sources. Yet, archaeological studies have offered a boon of rich data in recent decades that have transformed our understanding of royal places and wider society. Because kingship was vested in places in Ireland, a fundamental question is how the development of royal landscapes illuminates the evolution of kingship and that institution’s wider societal roles. This volume harnesses this interdisciplinary evidence for the evolution of kingship through the prism of how societies formed and governed kingdoms, and the role that royal landscapes played in these discourses particularly. Framed around two major case studies, the Uí Néill and Éoganachta, and their regional hegemonies centred on the kingships of Tara and Cashel, it traces the evolution of diverse kingdoms throughout Ireland, and the role that places of power played in strategies of rulership and governance
Evaluation of the reproducibility and performance characteristics of the Phagomagnetic separation-qPCR assay for rapidly detecting viable Mycobacterium avium subsp. paratuberculosis in bovine milk and feces
No full textInter-laboratory trials were carried out to evaluate the reproducibility and estimate test performance characteristics of the Phagomagnetic separation (PhMS)-qPCR assay, a novel phage-based assay recently developed as a rapid alternative to culture for detecting viable Mycobacterium avium subsp. paratuberculosis (MAP) in bovine milk and feces. Unique reagents and a detailed instruction manual required for the PhMS-qPCR assay were provided to five European veterinary diagnostic laboratories by Rapid-Myco Technologies Limited. Milk and feces test panels were prepared at NEIKER and distributed to participant laboratories between April–June 2023 and March–May 2024, respectively. Each test panel comprised of MAP-spiked and/or naturally infected bovine milk or feces samples (18 samples per panel on two separate occasions for each sample matrix). The six participant laboratories (including organizer) performed automated or manual PhMS and used whatever qPCR instrument they had available. All laboratories used the IDEXX RealPCR MAP DNA test for the qPCR part of the assay. Generally, substantial agreement was observed overall between PhMS-qPCR results and reference culture results for spiked milk (Kappa value 0.5982) and naturally MAP-infected feces (Kappa value 0.7780 using an amended protocol). Preliminary estimates of the detection (analytical) sensitivity (Se), detection specificity (Sp) and trueness (T) of the PhMS-qPCR assay applied to bovine milk and feces were obtained. The mean Se, Sp, and T values across six laboratories were 93.1%, 67.9%, and 88.7% when milk was tested and 84.1%, 93.7%, and 88.9% when feces was tested. Overall, the PhMS-qPCR assay performed well in multiple laboratories and test reproducibility was demonstrated (Cohen's Kappa ≥0.6–1.000). The estimates of performance characteristics of the PhMS-qPCR assay are generally acceptable for a potential diagnostic test. Hence the PhMS-qPCR assay shows considerable promise as a rapid test to detect viable MAP in veterinary specimens such as milk and feces. Further and fuller validation of the assay will continue to assess its diagnostic potential.<br/
Identifying and overcoming barriers to innovation in responsible management education
No full textThe need to integrate Responsible Management Education (RME) within the business school curriculum is widely recognised and increasingly considered a key requirement for developing future-ready graduates. Specifically, individuals who are cognisant of and responsive to social, environmental, and economic challenges and opportunities at the local, national, and global levels. Beddewela et al. (2017, p. 264) define RME as ‘any teaching, research or enterprise activities in the areas of ethics, sustainability and responsible corporate practices, which business schools engage with in order to develop a more responsible strategic focus’. Increased interest in RME has been driven by a range of factors, including rising awareness of global challenges, such as climate change, environmental pollution, and social inequality; changing expectations of business school stakeholders, including current and potential students; increasing pressure on businesses to adopt socially responsible and sustainable practices, particularly in the wake of the Global Financial Crisis; regulatory and policy-related developments at the national and international levels; and, not least, fundamental questions about the role (and necessity) of business schools within society. Despite this, progress to date in regard to developing and implementing RME has been slow and fragmented. This can be attributed to a range of persistent barriers, including institutional resistance to change, lack of faculty expertise and engagement, resource constraints, curriculum overload, and misalignment with business community expectations. To support educators to overcome the obstacles to advancing RME, the United Nations (UN) supported Principles for Responsible Management Education (PRME) UK & Ireland Chapter established a ‘Seed Funding Competition for Innovative Pedagogical Approaches and Teaching Practices in PRME’ in 2020. The competition has funded over 15 novel projects to date across a variety of academic disciplines, including accounting, human resource management, marketing, organisational behaviour, and travel and tourism. This interactive session will share key insights in regard to promoting innovation in RME gleaned from the competition, provide inspirational examples of novel teaching practices, and highlight a range of free, research-informed educational resources. In addition, participants will be encouraged to share their own experiences and suggest ideas for how to enhance innovation within RME that could be actioned within the PRME Chapter UK & Ireland community. Although targeted at business school educators, the session will also be of value to anyone within an interest in Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) and addressing the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) within the higher education curriculum. <br/
Call for papers: 'We must persist! Towards a global criminology of war': Criminological Encounters: Special Issue
No full textThe role of ESG in shaping the impact of financial development on banks' performance
No full textThis study investigates how financial development, divided into financial markets and financial institutions, affects banks' performance across 93 financially developed countries during the period between 2008 and 2023. The analysis highlights the role of environmental, social and governance readiness as core determinants that reshape financial progress and banking outcomes. On the basis of financial intermediation theory and the broader idea of stakeholder engagement, this study finds that entrepreneurship strengthens bank performance, internet usage negatively affects it, and mobile usage shows a negative effect in the case of financial institutions but a positive impact when financial markets are considered
Prediction of bacteremia and bacterial meningitis among febrile infants aged 28 days or younger
No full textImportance. Fever in the first month of life is often the only sign of life-threatening invasive bacterial infection, specifically bacteremia or bacterial meningitis. Most international guidelines recommend routine lumbar punctures for all febrile infants 28 days or younger to rule out bacterial meningitis. Clinical prediction rules may allow for select testing, but limited information exists on their performance to identify infants at low risk for invasive bacterial infections.Objective. To evaluate the diagnostic accuracy of the updated Pediatric Emergency Care Applied Research Network (PECARN) prediction rule for identifying febrile infants 28 days or younger with bacteremia or bacterial meningitis.Design, Setting, and Participants. This pooled analysis of 4 published prospective cohort studies from pediatric emergency departments across 6 countries within the global Pediatric Emergency Research Network included previously healthy, non–ill-appearing, full-term (≥37 weeks’ gestation) infants aged 28 days or younger with a temperature greater than or equal to 38.0 °C who underwent urine, blood, and serum testing.Exposure. Infants were classified as low risk if they had a negative urinalysis/dipstick test result, serum procalcitonin less than or equal to 0.5 ng/mL, and blood absolute neutrophil count less than or equal to 4000/mm3.Main Outcomes and Measures. Meta-analytic methods were applied to assess diagnostic accuracy (sensitivity, specificity, and positive and negative predictive values) of the PECARN rule for detection of infants with invasive bacterial infections (bacteremia or bacterial meningitis).Results. Among 1537 infants 28 days or younger (905 male, 1324 hospitalized, 1080 with lumbar punctures), 69 (4.5%) had invasive bacterial infections, including 11 (0.7%) with bacterial meningitis. Overall, 632 (41.1%) met low-risk criteria. The prediction rule had a sensitivity of 94.2% (95% CI, 85.6%-97.8%), specificity of 41.6% (95% CI, 36.7%-46.7%), positive predictive value of 6.9% (95% CI, 4.8%-9.9%), and negative predictive value of 99.4% (95% CI, 98.1%-99.8%) for invasive bacterial infections. In a secondary analysis of 2531 infants from the 2 US-based cohorts from which the rule was originally derived and the 4 validation cohorts, 96 (3.8%) had invasive bacterial infections, 22 (0.9%) had bacterial meningitis, and 1079 (42.6%) were classified as low risk; rule performance was similar. No infants with bacterial meningitis were misclassified in the primary or secondary analyses.Conclusions and Relevance. The updated PECARN rule had high sensitivity but lower specificity for identifying febrile infants 28 days or younger with invasive bacterial infections in this study, with no missed cases of bacterial meningitis. These results may support shared decision-making regarding select vs routine use of lumbar puncture among infants classified as being at low risk of invasive bacterial infections
E-PSOGA: an enhanced hybrid metaheuristic for optimal edge-to-cloud placement of services with multi-version components
No full textThe evolution of edge-to-cloud networks has significantly increased the complexity of determining optimal service placement across these infrastructures, a challenge identified as an NP-complete problem. To address such problems, exact algorithms are impractical at larger scales owing to their computational demands. Heuristics exhibit faster runtimes but lower solution quality, whereas metaheuristics provide high-quality solutions at the cost of increased runtime. In this study, service placement in edge-to-cloud systems is investigated and formulated as an optimisation problem, where each service component is provided by different vendors and is available in multiple versions. The inclusion of multi-version components adds an additional layer of complexity, making the placement problem even more challenging. Specifically, this study addresses the service placement problem in Augmented Reality (AR)-and Virtual Reality (VR)-based remote repair and maintenance use cases, where service response time and system reliability are critical performance metrics. To optimise both metrics, we propose a novel hybrid metaheuristic algorithm (E-PSOGA) which combines the fast convergence of Particle Swarm Optimisation (PSO) with the global search capabilities of Genetic Algorithms (GA). A custom healing operator is also introduced to further enhance the solution quality and reduce the algorithm runtime. A comprehensive performance assessment shows that E-PSOGA reduces the response time by 37% compared with the other implemented baseline algorithms. E-PSOGA achieved 98% platform and 97% service reliability while maintaining a reasonable algorithm runtime. These results indicate that the proposed approach is well-suited for large-scale and time-sensitive scenarios requiring both computational efficiency and high solution quality.</p
Flow battery manifold design with heterogeneous inputs through generative adversarial neural networks
No full textGenerative machine learning has emerged as a powerful tool for design representation and exploration. However, its application is often constrained by the need for large datasets of existing designs and the lack of interpretability about what features drive optimality. To address these challenges, we introduce a systematic framework for constructing training datasets tailored to generative models and demonstrate how these models can be leveraged for interpretable design. The novelty of this work is twofold: (i) we present a systematic framework for generating archetypes with internally homogeneous but mutually heterogeneous inputs that can be used to generate a training dataset, and (ii) we show how integrating generative models with Bayesian optimization can enhance the interpretability of the latent space of admissible designs. These findings are validated by using the framework to design a flow battery manifold, demonstrating that it effectively captures the space of feasible designs, including novel configurations while enabling efficient exploration. This work broadens the applicability of generative machine-learning models in system designs by enhancing quality and reliability