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“Skills for Resilience in Farming”; an evidencebased, theory driven educational intervention to increase mental health literacy and help-seeking intentions among Irish farmers
No full textWhile mental health literacy is an important component to successful help-seeking, rural populations often face gaps in both knowledge and service provision. Informed by the Theory of Planned Behaviour and Self-Efficacy Theory, we designed the ‘Skills for Resilience’ as a brief, once-off, community-based educational intervention to increase Irish farmers’ mental health literacy and help-seeking intentions. We adopted a quasi-experimental between (group: intervention and control) and within-group design (time: baseline [T1], immediately post-intervention [T2], and ≥
1 month post-intervention [T3]). A total of 72 participants (intervention n=37; control n=35) were recruited from knowledge-sharing discussion groups. Although recruitment was also open to women, all discussion groups consisted of men. A trained facilitator delivered a discussion lasting between 30 and 90 minutes. Five intervention participants also participated in a qualitative interview after T3. Our results identified
intervention participants’ mental health literacy increased significantly at T2 and T3 compared to T1, but did not increase between T2 and T3. Mental health literacy was also significantly greater in the intervention group compared to the control group at T2 and T3. Help-seeking intentions and self-efficacy in seeking mental healthcare also increased significantly at T2 compared to T1, but did not increase between T1
and T3 or T2 and T3. There were no significant changes in outcome measures for the control group at any time point. Through reflexive thematic analysis we identified that the intervention also addressed stigma against mental health (Theme 1) and provided important resources for participants and their community’s present and future
coping (Theme 2). At T3, 100% of participants enjoyed the discussion and would recommend the intervention to other farmers. This intervention provides a successful example of integrating the Theory of Planned Behaviour and Self-Efficacy Theory to improve mental health literacy in farmers using a brief, educational intervention
The Parallel Universes of Political Finance in Ireland
No full textIrish political finance exists in two parallel universes, one for elections and one for day-to-day activities. Ireland’s election finance rules focus on candidate spending. Candidates are treated equally and regarded as belonging to civil society. Ireland’s parties are treated as public utilities. They are overwhelmingly publicly funded for their non-electoral activities. Funding is allocated proportionally, not equally, and is provided on the basis that parties submit to a plethora of bans, limits, and disclosures. They are parallel universes because parties are not allowed to use their generous public funding in election and referendum campaigns: this is important because in a scenario where public funding could be spent on campaigns, incumbents would have a much greater financial advantage. In the UK state subsidies are so miserly that public funding is a footnote, not a parallel universe. In other countries, like Finland, public funding can be spent on campaigns: there is only one political finance universe. The parallel-universe argument is a more useful description of Ireland’s political finance regime than any of the existing classifications from the small political finance literature
Artificial Intelligence and Indigenous (Self-)Representation: A Model for Agency and Autonomy
No full textOverview
The recent rise of generative artificial intelligence (Gen-AI) models for cultural production has provided new pathways for those who struggle to generate images and see themselves and their cultures accurately represented. These models contribute to lower entry level requirements and expanding image creation and dissemination to a broader range of potential users. Visual Gen-AI image-making models such as MidJourney, Dall-E, and Stable Diffusion allow users with little formal training in image-making, or technical knowledge about the internal computing processes within generative models, to create images from textual prompts. While some results can be visually impressive and have garnered much attention from the general public and the media, scholars and visual experts have been quick to point out that the images produced reflect the statistical processing of Gen-AI image-making, as well as other structural issues that arise from within the original dataset of images used to train visual models (Salvaggio, 2023). Moreover, the images made with Gen-AI models also raise questions about Gen-AI’s internal/baked-in politics of visibility (Gillespie, 2024) as well as the practices used to capture data and how this data is subsequently managed and mined for financial gain, thus drawing criticism for its historical neo-colonial roots and negative impacts (Mejias and Couldry, 2024).
Aims and Objectives
This paper aims to investigate structural injustices and questions about the visual self-representation of member of Indigenous communities from Abya Yala (the Americas). In doing so it will argue for other potential alternative processes and models for Gen-AI image-making that take into account and attempt to minimize (if not counter) the politics of (in)visibility, ownership and management of data and Gen-AI image-making processes. In doing so, the paper promotes an ethical approach to cultural production with Gen-AI rooted in co-creation and work alongside members of Indigenous communities.
Backdrop and Methods
The public release of MidJourney in late 2022 was a watershed moment in Gen-AI visual image-making for the general public, but its stereotypical depiction of people from minoritized groups such as Indigenous peoples provided evidence of the model’s limitations and structural biases. Soon after, in the early months of 2023, a team of scholars and practitioners from Ireland, Latin America and the UK commenced work on an online practice-based research project with 18 members of Indigenous communities across South America (Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile and Peru) to discuss the potential of Gen-AI models (MidJourney) to generate self-representational images. The findings corroborated the structural limitations of Gen-AI’s tendency for stereotypical depictions, often based on the dataset of Western-made depictions of Indigenous peoples, thus providing little factual accuracy regarding the visual depiction of specific groups nor nuances about socio-cultural traditions. Nevertheless, the project also revealed an unexpected positive reaction from the participants, who despite being disappointed with the images, had a positive reaction associated with perceived notions of higher degrees of autonomy and control over one’s self-representation. In short, participants were largely critical of the visual depictions provided by the model but were enthusiastic about the degree of control they exerted in self-representation during the process of making the images.
Based on the initial findings the project team developed a series of customized, personalized, and exclusive Gen-AI visual models designed to provide greater degrees of control, autonomy, and self-determination to participants. The models remain under development, but in its current stage the project allows for three key areas of discussion:
(1) An overview description of the Indigenous Gen-AI model, its current stage of development, and details about the features that make it stand out from other models, such as its self-contained offline processing (based on Stable Diffusion) and the capacity to train and incorporate customized models based on participants’ conceptual designs (e.g. textile patterns, facial features, dress and clothing) and generate images based on these;
(2) A discussion of the co-creative production process of image-making developed by the team, with attention to the roles and responsibilities of the stakeholders involved (i.e. scholars, Indigenous artists and an artist-technologist collective), informed by the concept of cultural stewardship and authorship on both individual and collective levels;
(3) An analysis of a selection of images generated by ndigenous participants, contextualized within their individual projects (how the images are made, how custom models are trained, and the rationale for their creation), and the impacts the images have achieved through a series of public exhibitions.
Conclusions and Significance: Applied Digital Buen Vivir
The Indigenous image generator models follow the principles set out in a “Manifesto for Digital Buen Vivir”, written by some of the same Indigenous participants on a separate, but interrelated, research project. The document draws from the principles of Buen Vivir, a post-colonial critique of Western capitalism that is largely centered on notions about Indigenous communities’ wellbeing and integrated perspective towards environmental sustainability, and argues that a better digital life is characterised by “awareness and responsibility regarding social and cultural inequalities”, a broader perspective regarding sustainability and the environment that extends beyond the economic sphere, strong ethical principles regarding data use and cultural stewardship, as well as autonomy and self-determination.
As a practice-based project the Indigenous Gen-AI image generator aims to break with and criticize neo-colonial data practices, the politics of (in)visibility, and limited autonomy and control of image-making by thinking through the issues and creating potential alternatives. In doing so, the project provides greater degrees of autonomy and control to its Indigenous users, as illustrated by the images generated by participants, the Gen-AI models trained by them, and the impacts of the process in their professional and personal lives. Nevertheless, the Indigenous model has also been instrumental in revealing a number of on-going structural problems and issues that characterize Gen-AI image-making more broadly. These include, but are not limited to: (a) the internal structures of personal computing and individualized devices/profiles (e.g. logins, passwords, profiles, data siloing and information design, which are challenging to shared data usage in a remotely accessed machine within the proposed ethical guidelines of cultural stewardship); (b) the infrastructure of the internet across the globe, lower connectivity capacity in the Global South, and inconsistent Gen-AI access; (c) varying degrees of visual production and consumption standards for producers and consumer of images on small (often broken) smartphone screens versus the large screens of desktop computers; (d) varying degrees of digital literacy, distinct cultural approaches regarding digital technologies and Gen-AI, and computing models across users. Our conclusion focuses, therefore, on a set of recommendations for the way forward in terms of Indigenous engagement with Gen-AI technologies for visual self-representation, and an indication of the way that the project will evolve in the next stage
Early School Leaving by Design—Prevention, Intervention and Compensation—A Policy Analysis of Early School Leaving and Underachievement Interventions in Europe
No full textThe purpose of this paper is to provide a comparative policy analysis of successful strategies that have been implemented across European countries to address early school leaving (ESL) and academic underachievement. Employing a transformative and multidimensional approach, the study examines systemic and local interventions that integrate cognitive and socio-emotional dimensions of learning. Using Eurostat data to categorise countries based on their ESL reduction progress, the analysis evaluates legislative frameworks, policy initiatives, and educational practices through the prevention, intervention, and compensation model. The findings identify common themes such as the expansion of early childhood education and care (ECEC), enhancement of guidance and counselling services, targeted support for socio-economically disadvantaged groups, inclusive policies for marginalised populations including Roma communities, and the development of vocational and second-chance education pathways. The paper highlights the critical importance of coherent and scalable policy design to reduce educational inequalities and contribute to achieving European Union ESL reduction targets by 2030. It advances policy discourse by emphasising the essential need for balanced preventive and compensatory measures to improve educational outcomes and to foster social inclusion across varied national contexts
Using EEG Signals to Examine Next-Word Predictability of Language Models in Reading
Get PDFLanguage Models (LMs) are primarily developed to address different natural language processing (NLP) tasks, and are not intended to reflect human reading comprehension processing. However, since these models are trained with the same written materials that humans also process in reading, they should share many of the same abilities in the reading comprehension processes as a human, particularly in next-word predictability. Comparing the accuracy of different types of LMs and humans in the next-word prediction task demonstrates their predictive capabilities but falls short of confirming whether LMs and the human brain process reading in a similar manner. To address this, the thesis used electroencephalography (EEG) signals to examine next-word predictability of different LMs during reading.
The main contributions of this thesis are as follows. First, we present a comprehensive resource for guiding EEG-based reading experiments, introduce a tailored preprocessing pipeline, and provide DERCo (Dublin EEG-based Reading Experiment Corpus), an openly accessible dataset combining EEG and next-word prediction data. Second, we use DERCo to analyse how the brain responds to various word categories (e.g., content words, function words, and grammatical classes), shedding light on the interaction between top-down and bottom-up processing during reading.
We demonstrate an improved decoding methodology that strengthens our analytical capabilities. Additionally, we highlight the effectiveness of a decoding approach that enhances analytical power compared to the traditional event-related potentials (ERPs) in EEG data analysis. Lastly, leveraging surprisal, an information-theoretic metric, alongside accuracy, we build brain encoding models for different LMs and human prediction production to capture neural responses at the word level. Our evaluation reveals that while more advanced language models exhibit closer align ment with human prediction patterns, they fail to fully reflect the human-like reading processes observed in brain signals
Subsidies Regulation in the EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement: The post-Brexit arrangements in comparison with WTO and EU law
Get PDFThis PhD thesis deals with the subsidy control regime established by the Chapter 3, Title XI of the EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA). Since 1 January 2021, the UK has fully left the EU regulatory system. The consequence of Brexit is that EU state aid rules no longer apply in the UK in terms of funding and other forms of support measures granted to businesses by public authorities. The only exceptions to this are set in the Ireland/Northern Ireland Protocol. The TCA, entered into force on the 1st of May 2021, whereby, the EU and the UK have agreed upon rules designed to ensure a level playing field for open and fair competition and sustainable development. In particular, the TCA has the most extensive set of provisions on subsidies seen in any free trade
agreement to date. The purpose of this thesis is to analyze the TCA rules on subsidies, discussing in a comparative perspective how they work and exploring in interdisciplinary terms whether they are sufficient to maintain a level playing field between the EU and UK after Brexit. To achieve this
objective, the thesis examines in detail the TCA mechanisms, comparing them with WTO subsidy law (in particular within the framework of the Subsidies and Countervailing Measures Agreement) and EU state aid law. Moreover, the thesis explains how economic and political dynamics within the EU-UK relationship have influenced the drafting and enforcement of the TCA subsidy control regime. Given that the UK is the first country to leave the EU, and that subsidy control was a true deal-breaker in the EU-UK negotiations, this thesis undertakes cutting-edge research. Thus, it fills a gap in the academic literature and seeks to contribute to explaining what the EU-UK post-Brexit trade deal means in practice
Ionic photo-fragmentation cross sections of the HS+, H2S+ and HCl+ molecular ions near the 2p threshold
Get PDFThe absolute cross sections for the production of X2+ andX3+ ions following absorption of monochromatised SOLEIL synchrotron radiation by the HX+ hydride molecular ions (X = S,Cl) are presented
as a function of photon energy in the region of the X2p ionisation thresholds (∼180 eV and∼220
eV for sulphur and chlorine, respectively). The experimental results are interpreted with the help of
extensive ab initio density functional theory (DFT) and post-Hartree-Fock configuration interaction
calculations including spin-orbit coupling to compute the absorption oscillator strengths of the X 2p
core excitations to valence and Rydberg states. In order to account for all the experimental features,
the calculations must include vibrational dynamics and spin-orbit coupling. Similar experimental data
are also presented for the sulfaniumyl H2S+ molecular ion
“I love things just as much as people”: Material Culture and L.M. Montgomery’s Emily Trilogy
Get PDFThe intersection of material culture with children’s fiction is an underexplored area of study. Lucy Maud Montgomery, the Canadian author most famous for Anne of Green Gables, provides an ideal starting point for such an examination. Most of Montgomery’s twenty novels are categorized as children’s fiction and contain references to hundreds of everyday objects with varying degrees of significance: some hugely symbolic or plot-driving, others seemingly incidental but often with unexpected meaning. Montgomery represented her time and place in her realistic fiction and perhaps had no intention of drawing particular attention to material things. However, I argue that these objects are a significant aspect of her fictional worlds, connecting characters, propelling narratives, and enabling protagonists’ growth and development, as well as illuminating aspects of the culture and society of Canada in the early twentieth century.
In applying material culture theory to Montgomery’s fiction, I am using various works to provide anthropological context, sources on children’s literature, and others on Montgomery studies to explore the roles of objects in these works with a particular focus on the Emily trilogy. Using close reading and the application of material culture theory as my methodologies, I examine the significance of objects to the protagonist’s growth as a young woman and her career development despite various barriers, as well as exploring connections between characters and even between author and reader
Metacognition in Irish Senior Cycle and Preservice Teacher Chemistry Education: An action research inquiry at a time of curriculum reform, and the death of a positivist
Get PDFThis action research (AR) investigates the affordances and limitations of metacognitive teaching and learning strategies in senior cycle chemistry and preservice chemistry teacher (PST) education in the Irish context. My motivation for this research stemmed from: (i) the importance of metacognition in chemistry due to its abstract nature, and (ii) the research took place during a period of significant reform in Irish second-level education, which emphasises key competencies across Junior and Senior Cycle subject specifications, including metacognition.
The AR methodology allowed insights across five cycles. In the senior cycle study (AR Cycles 1–3), I explored the incorporation of metacognitive teaching and learning strategies in chemistry lessons. Insights from this study informed the design and implementation of a PST methodology module (AR Cycles 4–5). I analysed both qualitative and quantitative data as part of triangulation. I acknowledge the limitations of my inquiry, the challenges of identifying metacognition and conducting AR, and I discuss the rigor and trustworthiness of the findings.
Through planning, acting, observing, and reflecting on theory and practice across the AR cycles, I propose contributions to actionable knowledge, including a model for integrating metacognition into the teaching and learning of abstract chemical concepts. I identify the value of student/PST generation of representations as a domain-specific approach for incorporating metacognition in chemistry, facilitated through associated descriptions. Contributions to practice and policy emphasise integrating metacognitive strategies into second-level chemistry and PST education, including ensuring PSTs experience, plan, and practice these strategies to appreciate their value within a domain-specific context. Contributions to theory include three cornerstones of a ‘metacognitive lens’ for teaching and learning strategies of abstract chemical concepts. These cornerstones address metacognition through awareness of the (i) voice (ii) evolution and (iii) consolidation of cognitive processes. Contributions to research include the detail of my epistemological and ontological journey, particularly the evolution of my perspective on knowledge from positivism to interpretivism, as a natural scientist conducting research in a social science context
Dividend announcements and share price dynamics: new evidence from Saudi-listed companies using event study approach
Get PDFAlthough a considerable number of empirical studies have been conducted in developed markets to examine dividend signaling effects, very few comparable studies have been carried out in the Saudi market context. This study deeply investigates how the Saudi exchange market may have reacted to dividend news during an eight-year study period from a total sample of 280 dividend announcements made by 99 Saudilisted companies. Results demonstrate that a company’s share price reacts to the announcement of a cash dividend during the event window. Besides, findings reveal a significant positive reaction in the share price at the time of the announcement of an increase in the dividend payment level. Furthermore, results demonstrate that the
abnormal return is negative but not significantly different from zero at the time of the announcement of a decrease in the dividend payment level. Likewise, findings show that the shareholders earn just normal returns on the announcement day and that the abnormal return is not statistically different from zero for the dividend, not change group. The findings suggest potential information leakage before dividend announcements, raising concerns about insider trading. This highlights the need
for stronger regulatory oversight and stricter disclosure enforcement. Companies should also use alternative communication channels to improve transparency and consider corporate social responsibility initiatives to signal their quality to investors