NUI Maynooth Eprint Archive
Not a member yet
18159 research outputs found
Sort by
Reconstructed monthly river flows for Irish catchments 1766–2016
No full textA 250-year (1766–2016) archive of reconstructed river flows is presented for 51 catchments across Ireland. By leveraging meteorological data rescue efforts with gridded precipitation and temperature reconstructions, we develop monthly river flow reconstructions using the GR2M hydrological model and an Artificial Neural Network. Uncertainties in reconstructed flows associated with hydrological model structure and parameters are quantified. Reconstructions are evaluated by comparison with those derived from quality assured long-term precipitation series for the period 1850–2000. Assessment of the reconstruction performance across all 51 catchments using metrics of MAE (9.3 mm/month; 13.3%), RMSE (12.6 mm/month; 18.0%) and mean bias (−1.16 mm/month; −1.7%), indicates good skill. Notable years with highest/lowest annual mean flows across all catchments were 1877/1855. Winter 2015/16 had the highest seasonal mean flows and summer 1826 the lowest, whereas autumn 1933 had notable low flows across most catchments. The reconstructed database will enable assessment of catchment specific responses to varying climatic conditions and extremes on annual, seasonal and monthly timescales
Ireland’s pre‐1940 daily rainfall records
No full textThis article presents daily rainfall data and metadata for Ireland transcribed from historical manuscript and printed copies of rainfall registers located in Met Éireann's
archives. To facilitate the transcription of rainfall observations from paper records, the historical manuscripts were scanned and integrated into Met Éireann's digital
archives. The transcription from digital image to data format was undertaken in collaboration with students at Maynooth University as part of a novel crowdsourcing
initiative to integrate data rescue activities into the classroom. In total, 3,616 station years of rainfall data (~1.32 million daily values) were transcribed. The data, which was double keyed, have undergone basic quality assurance to check for transcription errors and the resultant raw data and associated metadata are presented here. Ongoing work involves the application of further quality assurance and homogenization techniques to develop a long-term, quality assured daily rainfall network for Ireland
Looking back and looking forward: Conversations on Paulo Freire’s Influence on Global Development Practice
No full textPapers from a Conference to mark the
Centenary of the Birth of Paulo Freire (1921-1997)
Hosted by the Maynooth University Department of International Development
(MU DID) on October 28, 202
Student experiences of online study groups and drop-in mathematics support during COVID-19
No full textIn this paper, we consider the changes to mathematics learning support (MLS) at Maynooth University due to the COVID-19 pandemic, including the provision of novel online study groups aimed at increasing student engagement and interaction. We briefly outline the local, national and international impact of COVID-19 on MLS and then focus on the results of a student survey. Respondents who regularly used online MLS were broadly positive about their experiences. They cited, in particular, the influence of tutors and the scheduled study groups, which provided structure and motivation as well as the opportunity to work with others and ask questions in less intimidating small groups. However, some respondents highlighted factors that impacted negatively on their engagement. These included low attendance or interaction from peers, timetabling issues or busy schedules, lack of awareness of the details of the services and increased feelings of discomfort and anxiety in an online environment. We consider how this student feedback may influence our future online and in-person supports
Children’s Carbon Cultures
No full textIn this article, we examine the connection between how we imagine carbon, energy and energy futures, and carbon use. We argue that to act on climate change we must reframe our cultural understanding carbon. Where children have often been left out of discussions of carbon use, we bring children into these conversations about carbon consumption and imaginaries through examining contemporary perspectives on posthumanism and energy cultures. We demonstrate that children’s imaginative renderings of possible climate change solutions offer an effectively very different way of connecting with climate change, perhaps a more motivating and inspiring means of relating to the more than human world and reworking our entanglements with energy cultures
Disobedient youth: Lessons from the youth climate strike movement
No full textIn the middle of the long, hot European summer of 2019, 450 young people travelled from across
Europe to the shores of Lake Geneva. They gathered together in the town of Lausanne as
representatives of a new youth-led movement for climate justice which had erupted across
Europe in the previous months. By the time these activists arrived in Switzerland, they had
already co-ordinated a first major wave of strikes which mobilised 1.6 million people in March
2019 (Wahlström et al., 2019: 5) and three quarters of a million in May 2019 (Fridays for Future,
2021). This second school strike action coincided with the European Parliament elections. At
their August meeting the strikers made the Lausanne Climate Declaration which articulated three
major demands for this nascent movement (Fridays for Future, 2019):
1. Keep the global temperature rise below 1.5 °C compared to pre-industrial levels.
2. Ensure climate justice and equity.
3. Listen to the best united science currently available.
The Lausanne Declaration identified further details on how this might be done, such as calling for
the declaration of a ‘Europe-wide climate emergency, which includes goals, targets, and
mechanisms such as check-ups to ensure transparency and accountability’ (Fridays for Future,
2019: 7). However, strikers have generally resisted making or communicating specific policy
demands. The Lausanne meeting was followed by a second wave of strikes in September 2019
with an estimated 7.6 million people participating in 6000 protest events across 185 countries
(de Moor et al., 2020). The core youth strategy has been to use the strike tactic to collectively raise
their voices. Their simple message has been to call on political representatives and states to
respond to the climate crisis in a just way with the urgency that science requires
Minimal stratigraphic evidence for coseismic coastal subsidence during 2000 yr of megathrust earthquakes at the central Cascadia subduction zone
No full textLithology and microfossil biostratigraphy beneath the marshes of a central
Oregon estuary limit geophysical models of Cascadia megathrust rupture during
successive earthquakes by ruling out >0.5 m of coseismic coastal subsidence
for the past 2000 yr. Although the stratigraphy in cores and outcrops includes
as many as 12 peat-mud contacts, like those commonly inferred to record subsidence during megathrust earthquakes, mapping, qualitative diatom analysis,
foraminiferal transfer function analysis, and 14C dating of the contacts failed to
confirm that any contacts formed through subsidence during great earthquakes.
Based on the youngest peat-mud contact’s distinctness, >400 m distribution,
~0.6 m depth, and overlying probable tsunami deposit, we attribute it to the
great 1700 CE Cascadia earthquake and(or) its accompanying tsunami. Minimal
changes in diatom assemblages from below the contact to above its probable
tsunami deposit suggest that the lower of several foraminiferal transfer function
reconstructions of coseismic subsidence across the contact (0.1–0.5 m) is most
accurate. The more limited stratigraphic extent and minimal changes in lithology,
foraminifera, and(or) diatom assemblages across the other 11 peat-mud contacts are insufficient to distinguish them from contacts formed through small,
gradual, or localized changes in tide levels during river floods, storm surges,
and gradual sea-level rise. Although no data preclude any contacts from being
synchronous with a megathrust earthquake, the evidence is equally consistent
with all contacts recording relative sea-level changes below the ~0.5 m detection
threshold for distinguishing coseismic from nonseismic changes
Decentering the smart city
No full textThis short working paper provides a critique of the smart city and the alternative visions of its
detractors, who seek a more just and equitable city. Drawing parallels with data activism and
data justice, it is argued that two main approaches to recasting the smart city are being
adopted: inverting the ethos and use of smart city technologies; and discontinuing and
blocking their deployment. The case is made for decentring the smart city, moving away from
the reification of technologies to frame and consider their work within the wider
(re)production of social relations
Born or made - can interdisciplinary and intersectoral doctorate education create institutional entrepreneurs? A systematic review
No full textSolving grand societal challenges such as equitable healthcare provision and
climate change will require institutional entrepreneurs – people who can
challenge prevailing regulations, behaviors, and ways of thinking. As the
pinnacle of educational achievement, the doctoral degree should be the fire in
which such fledgling institutional entrepreneurs are forged. Doctoral
education has, however, been criticized as overspecialized and divorced from
reality. We systematically review the doctoral education literature in our
search for doctoral education programs that challenge institutional norms by
bridging sectoral and disciplinary divides. We ask whether such programs can
help to nurture institutionally entrepreneurial researchers. We find that
students must manage ambiguous identities and wide networks but that such
programs have the potential to equip them for both sense-making and sensegiving activities of institutional entrepreneurship
Simultaneous extraction of fragmentation functions of light charged hadrons with mass corrections
No full textAchieving the highest possible precision for theoretical predictions at the present and future high-energy lepton and hadron colliders requires a precise determination of fragmentation functions (FFs) of light and heavy charged hadrons from a global QCD analysis with great accuracy. We describe a simultaneous determination of unpolarized FFs of charged pions, charged kaons and protons/antiprotons from single-inclusive hadron production in electron-positron annihilation (SIA) data at next-to-leading order and next-to-next-to-leading order accuracy in perturbative QCD. A new set of FFs, called SGKS20, is presented. We include data for identified light charged hadrons (π±, K± and p/p¯) as well as for unidentified light charged hadrons, h± and show that these data have a significant impact on both size and uncertainties of the fragmentation functions. We examine the inclusion of higher-order perturbative QCD corrections and finite-mass effects. We compare the new SGKS20 FFs with other recent FFs available in the literature and find in general reasonable agreement, but also important differences for some parton species. We show that theoretical predictions obtained from our new FFs are in very good agreement with the analyzed SIA data, especially at small values of z. The SGKS20 FF sets presented in this work are available via the LHAPDF interface