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Characterisation and identification of viable products from nitrogen rich agricultural wastewater
No full textNitrogen levels in agricultural wastewater pose to be one of the greatest threats on the environment, requiring rigorous treatment before being released to receiving waters. In recent years, the dairy and beef sectors have increased capacity resulting in increased volumes of wastewater, leading to greater operation costs for wastewater treatment. Scientists and engineers have been investigating novel treatment methods to attempt reducing costs of treatment. One such method to reduce costs, which has received little research interest is utilising the wastewater to produce viable products. This thesis reviews how nitrogen in slaughterhouse related wastewater and dairy related wastewater can be utilised to produce viable products. Nannochloropsis sp. microalgae is cultivated on dairy wastewater and the produced fatty acids are extracted under optimum conditions to identify what viable products can be produced such as biodiesel or nutraceuticals. Hydrophobic membrane contactors are investigated and used to recover ammonia from rendering condensate wastewater to produce an ammonium sulfate fertilizer. The results demonstrated that Nannochloropsis sp. allowed for up to 90 % nitrogen removal while producing 0.36 ng of C20:5ω3 in 2 mg of Nannochloropsis sp. which is a characteristic fatty acid of omega-3 supplements which can help prevent against cardiovascular disease, high blood pressure and arthritis. The incorporation of polytetrafluoroethylene hydrophobic membrane contactors allowed for the recovery of ammonia from rendering condensate wastewater. The membrane contactors removed up to 65 % of the nitrogen from the wastewater and the recovered product contained a 30 % ammonium sulfate product which can be used as a competitive agriculture fertilizer compared to products already on the market. The presented thesis demonstrates agricultural wastewater has great potential to be utilised to produce viable products from its nitrogen content, but further research is required to increase the efficiency of its recovery methods
Rethinking nineteenth-century literary culture: British worlds, southern latitudes and hemispheric methods
No full textDrawing on hemispheric, oceanic, and southern theory approaches, this article argues for the value of considering the nineteenth-century literary cultures of the southern settler colonies of Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa from within an interconnected frame of analysis. First, because of their distinctive historical and structural conditions; second, because of the density of their interregional networks and relations across intersecting oceanic spaces; and third, because of the long history of racialized imperialist imaginaries of the south. This methodological position rethinks current approaches to “British world” studies in two important ways: first, by decoupling the southern settler colonies from studies of settler colonialism in North America; and second, by rebalancing its metropolitan and northern locus by considering south-south networks and relations across a complex of southern islands, oceans, and continents. Without suggesting either that imperial intercultural exchanges with Britain are unimportant or that there is a culturally homogenous body of pan-southern writing, we argue that nineteenth-century literary culture from colonial Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa — what we call a “southern archive” — can provide a counterbalance to northern biases and provide new purchase on nation-centred literary paradigms — one that reveals not just south-south transnational exchanges and structural homologies between southern genres, themes, and forms, but also allows us to acknowledge the important challenges to foundational accounts of national literary canons initiated by southern theory and Indigenous studies scholars.Irish Research CouncilUpdate citation details during checkdate report - RORAuthor specified it is not peer reviewed - RO
Shifting sands: actor role and identity reconfigurations in service systems
No full textBuilding on previous actor-to-actor perspectives in service systems, this study mapped the dialectic trajectory of actor role and identity transitions in the context of family caregiving. The study employed the theoretical lens of role and identity transitions and drew on in-depth, qualitative interviews with 22 unpaid family caregivers caring for dependent relatives to demonstrate how family caregiver roles and identities co-evolve throughout the caregiving journey. Our findings elucidate three dynamic reconfigurations of role and identity transitions in family caregiving. We evince how such transitions vary in both degree and type, and range from incremental to disruptive, as actors assume and detach from roles and associated identities. Theoretical contributions shed light on the emergent and nuanced nature of role and identity transitions, as roles and identities synchronously and asynchronously co-evolve in a service system in conjunction with changed relations between actors, society, and the service system. The paper concludes with implications for enhancing actor engagement in dynamic service systems
Pure curcumin spherulites from impure solutions via nonclassical crystallization
No full textCrystallization experiments performed with highly
supercooled solutions produced highly pure (>99 wt %) and highly
crystalline mesocrystals of curcumin from impure solutions (∼22%
of two structurally similar impurities) in one step. These
mesocrystals exhibited a crystallographic hierarchy and were
composed of perfectly or imperfectly aligned nanometer-thick
crystallites. X-ray diffraction and spectroscopic analysis confirmed
that the spherulites are a new solid form of curcumin. A theoretical
hypothesis based on particle aggregation, double nucleation, and
repeated secondary nucleation is proposed to explain the spherulite
formation mechanism. The experimental results provide, for the first
time, evidence for an organic molecule to naturally form spherulites
without the presence of any stabilizing agents. Control experiments
performed with highly supercooled pure solutions produced
spherulites, confirming that the formation of spherulites is attributed to the high degree of supercooling and not due to the
presence of impurities. Likewise, control experiments performed with a lower degree of supercooling produced impure crystals of
curcumin via classical molecular addition mechanisms. Collectively, these experimental observations provide, for the first time,
evidence for particle-mediated crystallization as an alternate and efficient method to purify organic compounds
Eliciting beliefs about COVID-19 prevalence and mortality: epidemiological models compared with the street
No full textSubjective belief elicitation about uncertain events has a long lineage in the economics and statistics literatures. Recent developments in the experimental elicitation and statistical estimation of subjective belief distributions allow inferences about whether these beliefs are biased relative to expert opinion, and the confidence with which they are held. Beliefs about COVID-19 prevalence and mortality interact with risk management efforts, so it is important to understand relationships between these beliefs and publicly disseminated statistics, particularly those based on evolving epidemiological models. The pandemic provides a unique setting over which to bracket the range of possible COVID-19 prevalence and mortality outcomes given the proliferation of estimates from epidemiological models. We rely on the epidemiological model produced by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation together with the set of epidemiological models summarised by FiveThirtyEight to bound prevalence and mortality outcomes for one-month, and December 1, 2020 time horizons. We develop a new method to partition these bounds into intervals, and ask subjects to place bets on these intervals, thereby revealing their beliefs. The intervals are constructed such that if beliefs are consistent with epidemiological models, subjects are best off betting the same amount on every interval. We use an incentivised experiment to elicit beliefs about COVID-19 prevalence and mortality from 598 students at Georgia State University, using six temporally-spaced waves between May and November 2020. We find that beliefs differ markedly from epidemiological models, which has implications for public health communication about the risks posed by the virus
Enhancing the effectiveness of information retrieval techniques for known-item retrieval from lifelogs
No full textNowadays, almost everyone holds some form or other of a personal life archive. Automatically maintaining such an archive is an activity that is becoming increasingly common, however without automatic support the users will quickly be overwhelmed by the volume of data and will miss out on the potential benefits that lifelogs provide. This research is to build an effective and efficient lifelog information retrieval system, which can address the challenges of organising and searching personal life archives, using advanced IR models and ranking approaches.
The main contributions of this thesis are as follows. Firstly, lifelog data is defined and a first generation of lifelog datasets are constructed based on our proposed process. Secondly, a baseline search engine is proposed and developed for lifelog data collection, which aims to make the lifelog data searchable, organizable and serves as a baseline comparison for other lifelog retrieval systems that took part in the various benchmarking activities we organised. Thirdly, research on investigating and enriching image concept features using human-object interaction(HOI) annotations are presented and a causality score between different HOIs are calculated and automatic / manual HOI features are compared to validate which feature is most valuable for lifelog moment retrieval. Finally, the approaches presented use pre-trained textual and visual-semantic embeddings for the lifelog retrieval problem and enhance retrieval performance with a high-level semantic mapping of user information. In summary, this thesis primarily contributes to the field of building an effective and efficient lifelog information retrieval system and delivers a number of pioneering contributions
The effects of rehabilitation on athletic groin pain: neuromuscular and biomechanical factors
No full textIntroduction:
Athletic groin pain (AGP) is an overuse musculoskeletal presentation accounting for approximately 7% of all football injuries, resulting in an average time-off period of 16 ± 23 days and with a re-injury rate of 11% (Werner et al., 2019). During dynamic sporting actions (e.g. jumping, change-of-direction etc.) repetitive loading on the myotendinous and bony structures which stabilize and transfer force across the anterior pelvis may contribute to pain and injury if tissue tolerance levels are exceeded. The exact pathomechanics underlying AGP are poorly understood. Biomechanical analyses of joint loading, movement technique and muscle strength has previously been utilized to improve understanding of injury mechanisms in other overuse lower limb injuries. However, to date their remains a lack of biomechanical research investigating AGP.
Therefore, the primary aim of this thesis was to examine movement patterns using three-dimensional biomechanical analysis to increase understanding of injury mechanisms.
Methods:
This thesis incorporates the work from four research questions (Chapters 4, 5, 6, 7) and a systematic review on movement variability (Chapter 3). The analysis approach utilized combines both case-control and pre- to post-rehabilitation analyses for robust examination of factors deterministic of injury. Data collection included three- dimensional motion and force plate capture of jumping and hopping tasks, isometric hip strength, passive hip range-of-motion, lower limb reactive strength and patient reported outcome measures.
Results:
Athletes with AGP demonstrated significant deficits in isometric hip strength and reduced lower limb reactive strength compared to uninjured control athletes. These deficits were no longer significant following successful rehabilitation. Furthermore, AGP athletes demonstrated significantly reduced landing impulse during a single leg countermovement jump and reduced peak force and longer ground contact times during a continuous hopping task in comparison to uninjured controls. Following successful rehabilitation, landing impulse further decreased in the AGP group and remained significantly less to the control group, while peak force and ground contacts improved and were no longer significantly different to the control group. The magnitude of movement variability and ground reaction force variability were not affected by AGP when compared to uninjured control athletes.
Conclusion:
This thesis adds important insights into potential biomechanical and strength factors that are affected by AGP and importantly which return to normal with successful rehabilitation. Targeting these factors may be used to enhance rehabilitation programs for AGP and may play a role in secondary injury prevention as athletes return- to-play
Ethics of contributor role ontologies and taxonomies
No full textFirst introduced in 2015, Contributor Role Ontologies and Taxonomies (CROTs) are the most recent innovation developed to address ethical issues of scholarly authorship. By providing a standard list of roles to specify individual contributions to publications, CROTs enhance transparency and consistency about the reporting of conducted tasks, and accordingly, improve the attribution of credit and responsibilities. Although various parties such as academic journals and universities are increasingly adopting CROTs, thus far no study has evaluated them from an ethical perspective. To fill this gap, this study develops an assessment instrument and subsequently analyses three major CROTs including CRediT, CRO and TaDiRAH, and provides recommendations for improving them from an ethical perspective.
This study uses a bottom-up approach comprised of two literature reviews, combined with a review of non-conventional sources (i.e., forums, meeting notes, digital repositories) to collate concerns about authorship and use of CROTs, and generate candidate assessment criteria. Then with a top-down approach and using David Resnik’s 12 principles of research ethics, developed candidate assessment criteria are further analysed, and an assessment instrument consisting of 25 justified criteria is compiled. This instrument is used to identify the ethical strengths and weaknesses of CRediT, CRO and TaDiRAH. Finally, using current best practices and available technology in publication processes, recommendations are provided for further development and improvement of CROTs.
Results show that CRediT satisfies more criteria than other CROTs. In relation to the attribution of credit and usability, CRediT provides unique options. However, unlike TaDiRAH that is translated into languages other than English, and CRO that has revised its roles, CRediT is only available in English and has not been updated yet. Improving CROTs benefits almost all parties involved in the development, production, or use of academic publications such as researchers, journal editors, librarians, hiring and promotion committees and funders
Occupational exoskeletons: A roadmap toward large-scale adoption. methodology and challenges of bringing exoskeletons to workplaces
No full textThe large-scale adoption of occupational exoskeletons (OEs) will only happen if clear evidence of effectiveness of the
devices is available. Performing product-specific field validation studies would allow the stakeholders and decision makers (e.g., employers, ergonomists, health, and safety departments) to assess OEs’ effectiveness in their specific
work contexts and with experienced workers, who could further provide useful insights on practical issues related to
exoskeleton daily use. This paper reviews present-day scientific methods for assessing the effectiveness of OEs in
laboratory and field studies, and presents the vision of the authors on a roadmap that could lead to large-scale adoption
of this technology. The analysis of the state-of-the-art shows methodological differences between laboratory and field
studies. While the former are more extensively reported in scientific papers, they exhibit limited generalizability of the
findings to real-world scenarios. On the contrary, field studies are limited in sample sizes and frequently focused only
on subjective metrics. We propose a roadmap to promote large-scale knowledge-based adoption of OEs. It details that
the analysis of the costs and benefits of this technology should be communicated to all stakeholders to facilitate
informed decision making, so that each stakeholder can develop their specific role regarding this innovation. Large scale field studies can help identify and monitor the possible side-effects related to exoskeleton use in real work
situations, as well as provide a comprehensive scientific knowledge base to support the revision of ergonomics risk assessment methods, safety standards and regulations, and the definition of guidelines and practices for the selection
and use of OEs
Going Viral? The Impacts of COVID-19 on Sino-African Relations
No full textHow are we to understand the impacts of COVID-19 on geopolitics and
specifically the relations between China and Africa? Is the pandemic a conjunctural event,
which will not have lasting impacts, or does it represent a “critical juncture” where the
nature of Sino-African relations is recast in significant ways? This paper explores this issue
with a focus on African agency in the reproduction and reshaping of Sino-African
relations. It argues that while the Belt and Road Initiative is declining in importance in
terms of Sino-African engagements, COVID-19 has offered an opportunity for China to
increase its soft and “productive-relational” powers on the continent, while reconfiguring
some African elites’ “strategy of extraversion.” As such, the impacts of the pandemic seem
to be reinforcing extant trajectories and path dependencies rather than fundamentally
reshaping them