NUI Maynooth Eprint Archive
Not a member yet
18159 research outputs found
Sort by
An ensemble learning-based framework for assessing the energy flexibility of residential buildings with multicomponent energy systems
No full textA key issue in energy flexibility assessment is the lack of a scalable practicable approach to quantify and characterise the flexibility of individual residential buildings from an integrated energy system perspective without the need to use complex simulation models. In this study, this problem is addressed by explicitly quantifying the flexibility of multicomponent thermal and electrical systems commonly found in residential buildings based on an ensemble learning framework that consists of four algorithms, namely, random forests, multilayer perceptron neural network, support vector machine, and extreme gradient boosting. The day-ahead and hour-ahead prediction models developed are periodically updated considering dynamic feature selection based on residential occupancy patterns. The proposed methodology utilises synthetic data obtained from a calibrated white-box model of an all-electric residential building for two indicative occupancy profiles. The energy systems evaluated include a heat pump, a photovoltaic system, and a battery unit. The daily flexibility mappings are acquired by applying hourly independent, and consecutive demand response actions for each energy system considered, using suitable energy flexibility indicators. The results show that the ensemble models developed for each target variable outperform each of the constituent machine learning algorithms. Moreover, the storage capacity resulting from harnessing the heat pump downward flexibility demonstrates accurate accuracy with a coefficient of determination equal to 0.979 and 0.968 for day-ahead predictions and 0.998 and 0.978 for day ahead predictions for the two occupancy profiles considered, respectively. This framework can be used by electricity aggregators to evaluate a building portfolio in an end-user-tailored manner or optimally exploit its energy flexibility considering multi-step predictions to shift electricity usage to off-peak times or times of excess onsite renewable energy generation
Social isolation, social support, and loneliness and their relationship with cognitive health and dementia
No full textBackground: Poor social health is prevalent in older adults and may be associated with worse cognition, and increased dementia risk. The aim of this study was to determine whether social isolation, social support and loneliness are independently associated with cognitive function and incident dementia over 5 years in older adults, and to investigate potential gender differences.
Methods: Participants were 11,498 community‐dwelling relatively healthy Australians aged 70–94,in the ASPREE Longitudinal Study of Older Persons(ALSOP).Social isolation, social support, loneliness and cognitive function were assessed through self‐report.
Outcomes examined were cognitive decline(>1.5SD decline in cognitive performances in cebase line)and incident dementia(adjudicated according to DSM‐IV criteria).Results: Most participants self‐reported good social health(92%)with very few socially isolated(2%),with low social support(2%) or lonely(5%).Among women, social isolation and low social support were consistently associated with lower cognitive function(e.g., social support and cognitionβ =−1.17,p<0.001). No consistent longitudinal associations were observed between baseline social health and cognitive decline (over median 3.1 years) or incident dementia (over median 4.4years;social isolation: HR=1.00,p=0.99;low social support: HR=1.79,p=0.11;loneliness:HR=0.72,p=0.34 among women and men).
Conclusion: Our study provides evidence that social isolation and a low social support are associated with worse cognitive function in women, but not men. Social health did not predict incident cognitive decline or dementia, but we lacked power to stratify dementia analyses by gender
Using STEAM to Power Equality and Democracy in Vaccination Decision Making in the Face of Climate Apartheid
No full textTechnology and science are often promoted as the answer to the climate crisis, but changing human behavior from a user-centric position requires a humanistic and Design Thinking approach (Brown 2009). If Climate Apartheid is to be challenged to decrease the divides between social, cultural and economic groups then a participatory and democratic design approach needs to be found. One such challenge of inequality that will increasingly become more acute is the spread of viruses and disease, old and new, as the COVID pandemic has shown. Our study aims to demonstrate how Science Technology Engineering Arts Math (STEAM) education can bring together diverse groups to a common understanding and empower them to have the confidence to advocate change in human behavior from peer-to-peer rather than top down by government.
Our study focused on Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) vaccines, which are proven to save lives and eradicate associated cancers, but the uptake of the vaccine among first-year second level schoolgirls in Ireland, to whom it is offered for free, has dropped in recent years (ICS 2020). Building on the experience of a previous pilot study with Biological Science and Design students this project aimed to validate the findings of Authors (2022) with these questions: In what ways can STEAM engage and motivate students to learn about immunology and vaccination? And in what ways can STEAM help them develop the competence and confidence to communicate their understandings about immunology and vaccination? It brought together a team of academics from Education, Design, Biology, the Irish Cancer Society, and Irish post-primary students in an interdisciplinary, intersectoral and international collaboration.
Twenty 16-17 year old students, from three post-primary schools, participated in a weeklong series of on-campus STEAM workshops, facilitated by the team. These involved dialogical peer-to-peer teaching and learning (Topping 2009) amongst the participants to co-create localized, culturally inclusive, and scientifically informed stories around HPV vaccination and immunization. Using the principles of active learning (Bransford et al 1999) the students constructed their own knowledge and understanding through drama improvisation, storytelling through scripts and storyboards in an iterative process of presentations and idea selection in a visual thinking methodology (Averinou and Pettersson 2020).
A qualitative arts-based research methodology was adopted. The impact of the workshop series was evaluated on 3 key criteria: students’ knowledge of immunology, their confidence in expressing their knowledge about immunology, and their confidence in advocating for vaccination and countering misinformation. Thematic analysis of the data was employed (Clarke et al, 2015).
The project highlights key insights that have wider application to combating Climate Apartheid: a STEAM approach is successful in engaging students in active learning and changing their attitudes towards the HPV vaccine from passive to positive; the use of a STEAM approach enabled and encouraged students to become more confident in their understanding of HPV vaccine and immunization and to more confident to advocate for HPV vaccine to peers; combining creative learning and teaching approaches with scientific content can lead to meaningful changes in human behavior
Revista Sitio (1981-87): La apelación al ensayo en la transición democrática argentina
No full textThe abstract is included in the text
Modern Slavery as the New Moral Asset for the Production and Reproduction of State-Corporate Harm
No full textThe rise of the humanitarian narrative in relation to modern slavery has enabled corporations to profit from large-scale human exploitation with public consensus. Nation-states have legislated on modern slavery on the premise of protection, which has led to the entities involved evading or being exempt from responsibility for such practices by working with their suppliers to combat such practices despite evidence that their supply chains are linked to, or create further, vulnerability for workers. Other third parties praise such mechanism as transparent, reinforcing a moral consensus that is proving difficult to critique. By using the case study of the manufacture and import to Australia of medical gloves, this article unveils the perverseness of the moral, benevolent state-corporation narrative
The Falconer is Dead: Reassessing Representations of Eternal Recurrence.
No full textI
n a letter addressed to Lady Gregory on December 26, 1902, William Butler
Yeats first acknowledged the onset of what would become a lifelong fascination
with Friedrich Nietzsche’s philosophy: “Dear Friend,” he confesses:
I have written to you little and badly of late I am afraid for the truth is you
have a rival in Nietzsche, the strong enchanter. I have read him so much that
I have made my eyes bad again. They were getting well it seemed. Nietzsche
completes Blake & has the same roots—I have not read anything with so much
excitement, since I got to love Morris’s stories which have the same curious
astringent joy (CL3 284)
Less than three months later, Yeats expressed comparable sentiments to the
New York lawyer, John Quinn, who had recently gifted him all of the available
English translations of Nietzsche’s books:
I do not know how I can thank you too much for the three volumes on
Nietzsche. I had never read him before, but find that I had come to the same
conclusions on several cardinal matters. He is exaggerated and violent but has
helped me very greatly to build up in my mind an imagination of the heroic
life. His books have come to me at exactly the right moment, for I have planned
out a series of plays which are all intended to be an expression of that life which
seem[s] to me the kind of proud hard gift giving joyousness (CL3 313
Sensorimotor distance: A grounded measure of semantic similarity for 800 million concept pairs
No full textExperimental design and computational modelling across the cognitive sciences often rely on measures of semantic similarity between concepts. Traditional measures of semantic similarity are typically derived from distance in taxonomic databases (e.g. WordNet), databases of participant-produced semantic features, or corpus-derived linguistic distributional similarity (e.g. CBOW), all of which are theoretically problematic in their lack of grounding in sensorimotor experience. We present a new measure of sensorimotor distance between concepts, based on multidimensional comparisons of their experiential strength across 11 perceptual and action-effector dimensions in the Lancaster Sensorimotor Norms. We demonstrate that, in modelling human similarity judgements, sensorimotor distance has comparable explanatory power to other measures of semantic similarity, explains variance in human judgements which is missed by other measures, and does so with the advantages of remaining both grounded and computationally efficient. Moreover, sensorimotor distance is equally effective for both concrete and abstract concepts. We further introduce a web-based tool ( https://lancaster.ac.uk/psychology/smdistance ) for easily calculating and visualising sensorimotor distance between words, featuring coverage of nearly 800 million word pairs. Supplementary materials are available at https://osf.io/d42q6/
A framework for delineating the scale, extent and characteristics of American retail centre agglomerations
No full textRetail centres are important tools for understanding the distribution and evolution of the retail sector at varying geographical scales. This paper presents a framework through which formal definitions and typologies of retail centres, such as those in the UK, can be extended to the US. Using Chicago as a case study and data from SafeGraph, we present a retail centre delineation method that combines Hierarchical-DBSCAN with ‘H3’, and demonstrate the usefulness of a non-hierarchical approach to retail classification. In addition, we show that the dynamicity and comprehensibility of retail centres make them an effective tool through which to better understand the impacts of COVID-19 on retail centre ‘health’, demonstrating significant scope for a comprehensive delineation of the scale, extent and characteristics of American retail centre agglomerations, providing a tool through which to monitor the evolution of American retail
On Trade Justice, Power and Institutions – Some Questions for Risse and Wollner
No full textWhile Risse and Wollner make an important contribution to theorising global justice and trade, I identify certain concerns with their approach and suggest an alternative that addresses these. First, I query their emphasis on
subjection to the trade regime as a morally salient feature, suggesting their argument trades on an ambiguity, and fails to connect the trade regime, as a
trigger, with their preferred account of trade-justice-as-non-exploitation. Second, I examine their treatment of the WTO, how they understand international
organisations as inheritors of states’ obligations, and how far an organisation like the WTO can or should be self-consciously reoriented towards justice-as-non-exploitation. Third, I ask how their account is distinct from existing approaches, and whether it makes sense to apply the same conception of justice across diverse agents and institutions. I conclude by sketching an alternative
approach, which makes the justification of states’ policies to outsiders the central problem of trade justice
Human MAIT Cells Respond to Staphylococcus aureus with Enhanced Anti-Bacterial Activity
No full textMucosal-Associated Invariant T (MAIT) cells have been shown to play protective roles during infection with diverse pathogens through their propensity for rapid innate-like cytokine production and cytotoxicity. Among the potential applications for MAIT cells is to defend against Staphylococcus aureus, a pathogen of serious clinical significance. However, it is unknown how MAIT cell responses to S. aureus are elicited, nor has it been investigated whether MAIT cell cytotoxicity is mobilized against intracellular S. aureus. In this study, we investigate the capacity of human MAIT cells to respond directly to S. aureus. MAIT cells co-cultured with dendritic cells (DCs) infected with S. aureus rapidly upregulate CD69, express IFNγ and Granzyme B and degranulate. DC secretion of IL-12, but not IL-18, was implicated in this immune response, while TCR binding of MR1 is required to commence cytokine production. MAIT cell cytotoxicity resulted in apoptosis of S. aureus-infected cells, and reduced intracellular persistence of S. aureus. These findings implicate these unconventional T cells in important, rapid anti-S. aureus responses that may be of great relevance to the ongoing development of novel anti-S. aureus treatments