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MAJOR AND MICRO NUTRIENT ADVICE FOR PRODUCTIVE AGRICULTURAL CROPS
No full textA major responsibility of the research staff at Johnstown Castle has been the publication of
leaflets, booklets and manuals giving nutrient and trace element advice for grassland and
crops. This began in the 1940s and was the scientific basis for soil analysis (Coulter 2000),
since then, further updates were published by Coulter in 2004 (2nd edition), by Coulter and
Lalor in 2008 (3rd edition) and by Wall and Plunkett in 2016 (4th edition. This version has
now been enhanced and expanded to produce the present volume (5
th edition) published by
Wall and Plunkett in 2020. New sections and information and updates based on the latest
scientific findings have been made to grassland fertiliser advice section including nitrogen
advice for grass–white clover swards. Many of the chapters have been reorganised to make
them easier to consult and the advice and tables have been redesigned to be compliant with
the latest European and Irish legislation
Biodiversity and ecosystem function: making sense of numerous species interactions in multi-species communities
No full textUnderstanding the biodiversity and ecosystem function relationship can be challenging in species‐rich ecosystems. Traditionally, species richness has been relied on heavily to explain changes in ecosystem function across diversity gradients. Diversity–Interactions models can test how ecosystem function is affected by species identity, species interactions, and evenness, in addition to richness. However, in a species‐rich system, there may be too many species interactions to allow estimation of each coefficient, and if all interaction coefficients are estimable, they may be devoid of any sensible biological meaning. Parsimonious descriptions using constraints among interaction coefficients have been developed but important variability may still remain unexplained. Here, we extend Diversity–Interactions models to describe the effects of diversity on ecosystem function using a combination of fixed coefficients and random effects. Our approach provides improved standard errors for testing fixed coefficients and incorporates lack‐of‐fit tests for diversity effects. We illustrate our methods using data from a grassland and a microbial experiment. Our framework considerably reduces the complexities associated with understanding how species interactions contribute to ecosystem function in species‐rich ecosystems.Science Foundation Irelan
MEASURING GHG EMISSIONS ACROSS THE AGRI-FOOD SECTOR VALUE CHAIN: THE DEVELOPMENT OF BIO - A BIO-ECONOMY INPUT-OUTPUT MODEL
No full textSustainable intensification is one of the greatest challenges facing the agri-food sector which needs to produce
more food to meet increasing global demand, while minimising negative environmental impacts such as
agricultural greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Sustainable intensification relates not just to primary production,
but also has wider value chain implications. An input-output model is a modelling framework which contains
the flows across a value chain within a country. Input-output (IO) models have been disaggregated to have
finer granular detail in relation to agricultural sub-sectoral value chains. National IO models with limited
agricultural disaggregation have been developed to look at carbon footprints and within agriculture to look at
the carbon footprint of specific value chains. In this paper we adapt an agriculturally disaggregated IO model to
analyse the source of emissions in different components of agri-food value chains. We focus on Ireland, where
emissions from agriculture comprise nearly 30% of national emissions and where there has been a major
expansion and transformation in agriculture since the abolition of milk quota restrictions. In a substantial
Annex to this paper, we describe the modelling assumptions made in developing this model. Breaking up the
value chain into components, we find that most value is generated at the processing stage of the value chain,
with greater processing value in more sophisticated value chains such as dairy processing. On the other hand,
emissions are in general highest in primary production, albeit emissions from purchased animal feed being
higher for poultry than for other value chains, given the lower direct emissions from poultry than from
ruminants or sheep. The analysis highlights that emissions per unit of output are much higher for beef and
sheep meat value chains than for pig and poultry meat value chains
The Politics of Regulation in Ireland
No full textThere has been a global trend towards greater dependence on regulation in contemporary governance in the period since the 1980s, notably within the member states of the OECD, but also more widely. This chapter examines how these trends have played out in Ireland and examines how we might understand the general trends and also those explanations particular to Ireland. The chapter first addresses the trend towards the establishment of regulatory agencies in Ireland and next considers the more diffuse forms of regulatory governance arising from both international obligations and the deployment of private rules. It concludes with an assessment of how trends in regulation have shaped the oversight of the public sector, both over regulatory activities in particular, and in respect of politics and public services more generally, establishing modes of accountability for public sector activity that are substantially non-parliamentary.12 month embargo - RO
Connolly, Andy. Philip Roth and the American Liberal Tradition. Lexington Books, 2017
No full textThe election of Donald Trump as president of the United States in November 2016 has been a happy time for fiction. Not only because of the amount of insightful and innovative literature that is being published since his inauguration, but also because of the prominent role that fiction has been awarded in the communal effort—admittedly, mostly by the liberal sector of the American public— to make sense of the present.Irish Research Counci
Beyond knowledge capitalism’s happy labour subject
No full textThis article unravels the workings of happiness as integral to knowledge capitalism’s ‘emotionality of rule’ from the perspectives of two cohorts of ‘knowledge workers’: digital creatives and academics. It analyses the ways in which the study participants make work a site of personal fulfilment and happiness as they strive to become ‘happy’ labour subjects. Despite their different worklife trajectories, both cohorts appeal to the promise of happy entrepreneurial productivism. This promise attaches workers to the privileges of knowledge work in ways that downplay its costs. However, the dominance of knowledge capitalism’s happy labour subject is challenged by the backgrounded significance of work’s social benefits in their accounts. As such, this article argues that the individualised depoliticisation of contemporary ‘knowledge work’ can be challenged by re-valorising work’s social contributions
VID-WIN: Fast video event matching with query-aware windowing at the edge for the internet of multimedia things
No full textEfficient video processing is a critical component in many IoMT applications to detect events of interest. Presently, many window optimization techniques have been proposed in event processing with an underlying assumption that the incoming stream has a structured data model. Videos are highly complex due to the lack of any underlying structured data model. Video stream sources, such as CCTV cameras and smartphones are resource-constrained edge nodes. At the same time, video content extraction is expensive and requires computationally intensive deep neural network (DNN) models that are primarily deployed at high-end (or cloud) nodes. This article presents VID-WIN, an adaptive 2-stage allied windowing approach to accelerate video event analytics in an edge-cloud paradigm. VID-WIN runs parallelly across edge and cloud nodes and performs the query and resource-aware optimization for state-based complex event matching. VID-WIN exploits the video content and DNN input knobs to accelerate the video inference process across nodes. This article proposes a novel content-driven microbatch resizing , query-aware caching, and microbatch-based utility filtering strategy of video frames under resource-constrained edge nodes to improve the overall system throughput, latency, and network usage. Extensive evaluations are performed over five real-world data sets. The experimental results show that VID-WIN video event matching achieves ∼2.3× higher throughput with minimal latency and ~99% bandwidth reduction compared to other baselines while maintaining query-level accuracy and resource bounds
Optimising Water Quality Returns from Peatland Management while Delivering Co-Benefits for Climate and Biodiversity
No full textIrish peatlands are of national and international importance. Half of the blanket bogs considered to be of conservation importance in the European Atlantic Biogeographic Region are found on this island, along with some of the last Oceanic raised bog remaining in the EU. Irish peatlands are also a significant carbon store, containing ¾ of the total soil carbon stock in the Republic of Ireland. Healthy peatlands help provide natural filtration processes to clean water and reduce the quantity of water entering rivers and lakes; they help regulate the global climate and mitigate climate change; they support unique flora and fauna; and provide multiple social and cultural services to society.An Fóram Uisc
Application of Additive Manufacturing in Design & Manufacturing Engineering Education
No full textThe 2018 2nd International Symposium on Small-scale Intelligent Manufacturing Systems (SIMS), Cavan, Ireland, 16-18 April 2018This paper details how education and training in both digital manufacturing and materials processing was implemented as part of an undergraduate engineering programme involving 90 students. The programme was provided through additive manufacturing (3D printing), which enabled the students to develop an understanding of part design, fabrication and performance. The 3D printing study was carried out using Fused Deposition Modelling (FDM) and involved the fabrication of a turbocharger turbine part. This was subsequently evaluated using a customized test rig to assess the printed turbine rotation speed, under a fixed air-flow. The dimensions and morphology of the fabricated parts were also evaluated. Students benchmarked the performance of their turbine parts, against the part which was found to exhibit the highest rotation speed. A pre- and post-course survey was conducted to track the learning experience and feedback from the students involved. The results demonstrated that incorporation of digital manufacturing, self-guided and peer learning improved the engagement and learning experience.Science Foundation Irelan
