NUI Maynooth Eprint Archive
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VisTAS: blockchain-based visible and trusted remote authentication system
No full textThe information security domain focuses on security needs at all levels in a computing environment in either the Internet of Things, Cloud Computing, Cloud of Things, or any other implementation. Data, devices, services, or applications and
communication are required to be protected and provided by information security shields at all levels and in all working states. Remote authentication is required to
perform different administrative operations in an information system, and Administrators have full access to the system and may pose insider threats. Superusers and administrators are the most trusted persons in an organisation. “Trust but verify” is an approach to have an eye on the superusers and administrators. Distributed ledger technology (Blockchain-based data storage) is an
immutable data storage scheme and provides a built-in facility to share statistics among peers. Distributed ledgers are proposed to provide visible security and non- repudiation, which securely records administrators’ authentications requests. The presence of security, privacy, and accountability measures establish trust among its
stakeholders. Securing information in an electronic data processing system is challenging, i.e., providing services and access control for the resources to only legitimate users. Authentication plays a vital role in systems’ security; therefore, authentication and identity management are the key subjects to provide information security services. The leading cause of information security breaches is the failure of identity management/authentication systems and insider threats. In this regard, visible security measures have more deterrence than other schemes. In this paper, an authentication scheme, “VisTAS,” has been introduced, which provides visible security and trusted authentication services to the tenants and keeps the records in the blockchain
A fundamental unified framework to quantify and characterise energy flexibility of residential buildings with multiple electrical and thermal energy systems
No full textTo date, the energy flexibility assessment of multicomponent electrical and thermal systems in residential
buildings is hindered by the lack of adequate indicators due to the different interpretations, properties,
and requirements that characterise an energy flexible building. This paper addresses this knowledge gap by
presenting a fundamental energy flexibility quantification framework applicable to various energy systems
commonly found in residential buildings (i.e., heat pumps, renewables, thermal and electrical storage systems).
Using this framework, the interactions between these systems are analysed, as well as assessing the net energy
cost of providing flexibility arising from demand response actions where onsite electricity production is present.
A calibrated white-box model of a residential building developed using EnergyPlus (including inter alia a
ground source heat pump, a battery storage system, and an electric vehicle) is utilised. To acquire daily
energy flexibility mappings, hourly independent, and consecutive demand response actions are imposed for
each energy system, using the proposed indicators. The obtained flexibility maps give insights into both the
energy volumes associated with demand response actions and qualitative characteristics of the modulated
electricity consumption curves. The flexibility potential of each studied energy system is determined by weather
and occupant thermal comfort preferences as well as the use of appliances, lighting, etc. Finally, simulations
show that zone and water tank thermostat modulations can be suitably combined to shift rebound occurrences
away from peak demand periods. These insights can be used by electricity aggregators to evaluate a portfolio
of buildings or optimally harness the flexibility of each energy system to shift peak demand consumption to
off-peak periods or periods of excess onsite electricity generation
Prediction of Hamstring Injuries in Australian Football Using Biceps Femoris Architectural Risk Factors Derived From Soccer
No full textBackground: Hamstring strain injuries are the most common injuries in team sports. Biceps femoris long head architecture is
associated with the risk of hamstring injury in soccer. To assess the overall predictive ability of architectural variables, risk factors
need to be applied to and validated across different cohorts.
Purpose: To assess the generalizability of previously established risk factors for a hamstring strain injury (HSI), including demographics, injury history, and biceps femoris long head (BFlh) architecture to predict HSIs in a cohort of elite Australian football players.
Study Design: Cohort study; Level of evidence, 3.
Methods: Demographic, injury history, and BFlh architectural data were collected from elite soccer (n = 152) and Australian football (n = 169) players at the beginning of the preseason for their respective competitions. Any prospectively occurring HSIs were
reported to the research team. Optimal cut points for continuous variables used to determine an association with the HSI risk
were established from previously published data in soccer and subsequently applied to the Australian football cohort to derive
the relative risk (RR) for these variables. Logistic regression models were built using data from the soccer cohort and utilized
to estimate the probability of an injury in the Australian football cohort. The area under the curve (AUC) and Brier score were
the primary outcome measures to assess the performance of the logistic regression models.
Results: A total of 27 and 30 prospective HSIs occurred in the soccer and Australian football cohorts, respectively. When using
cut points derived from the soccer cohort and applying these to the Australian football cohort, only older athletes (aged ≥25.4
years; RR, 2.7 [95% CI, 1.4-5.2]) and those with a prior HSI (RR, 2.5 [95% CI, 1.3-4.8]) were at an increased risk of HSIs. Using
the same approach, height, weight, fascicle length, muscle thickness, pennation angle, and relative fascicle length were not significantly associated with an increased risk of HSIs in Australian football players. The logistic regression model constructed using
age and prior HSIs performed the best (AUC = 0.67; Brier score = 0.14), with the worst performing model being the one that was
constructed using pennation angle (AUC = 0.53; Brier score = 0.18).
Conclusion: Applying cut points derived from previously published data in soccer to a dataset from Australian football identified
older age and prior HSIs, but none of the modifiable HSI risk factors, to be associated with an injury. The transference of HSI risk
factor data between soccer and Australian football appears limited and suggests that cohort-specific cut points must be
established
Populism, the media, and the mainstreaming of the far right: The Guardian’s coverage of populism as a case study.
No full textPopulism seems to define our current political age. The term is splashed across the headlines, brandished in political speeches and commentaries, and applied extensively in numerous academic publications and conferences. This pervasive usage, or populist hype, has serious implications for our understanding of the meaning of populism itself and for our interpretation of the phenomena to which it is applied. In particular, we argue that its common conflation with far-right politics, as well as its breadth of application to other phenomena, has contributed to the mainstreaming of the far right in three main ways: (1) agenda-setting power and deflection, (2) euphemisation and trivialisation, and (3) amplification. Through a mixed-methods approach to discourse analysis, this article uses The Guardian newspaper as a case study to explore the development of the populist hype and the detrimental effects of the logics that it has pushed in public discourse
Beyond ‘food apartheid’: Civil society and the politicization of hunger in New Haven, Connecticut
No full textThis article illuminates the extent of community-based activism around food justice in New Haven, CT. Data was gathered through 28 in-depth interviews with civil society actors and participant observation across the food policy and urban agriculture (UA) sectors in the Fall of 2018. The paper traces the challenges that the sector faces
in advancing a more democratic food agenda even when the municipality is relatively open to activist claims. Three key findings are identified. (a) Following in the
American communitarian tradition, civil society groups working at grassroots level largely set the agenda for tackling food hunger in New Haven. That agenda, however, is broad-based and contradictory, incorporating initiatives aimed at addressing food insecurity and radical advocacy for food justice. (b) The efforts of civil society actors are structurally constrained by their dependence on philanthropic or grant based funding, on the one hand, and the symbolic rather than substantive support afforded by a fiscally weak, resource-poor municipality, on the other. (c) There is an inherent tension within the civil society sector arising from the disjuncture between strategies that have the effect of depoliticizing hunger and those that increasingly demand a repoliticization of hunger. These issues have been brought into sharper relief in light of the COVID-19 pandemic crisis and the 2020 Black Lives Matter
(BLM) mobilization, which, in concert, expose deep fissures in American society
Skilful prediction of cod stocks in the North and Barents Sea a decade in advance
No full textReliable information about the future state of the ocean and fish stocks is necessary for informed decision-making by fisheries scientists, managers and the industry. However,
decadal regional ocean climate and fish stock predictions have until now had low forecast skill. Here, we provide skilful forecasts of the biomass of cod stocks in the North and Barents Seas a decade in advance. We develop a unified dynamical-statistical prediction system wherein statistical models link future stock biomass to dynamical predictions of sea surface temperature, while also considering different fishing mortalities. Our retrospective forecasts
provide estimates of past performance of our models and they suggest differences in the source of prediction skill between the two cod stocks. We forecast the continuation of
unfavorable oceanic conditions for the North Sea cod in the coming decade, which would inhibit its recovery at present fishing levels, and a decrease in Northeast Arctic cod stock
compared to the recent high levels
Critical Geopolitics/critical geopolitics 25 years on
No full textGerard Toal’s/Gearoid ´ O ´ Tuathail’s Critical Geopolitics was published in 1996 in the University of Minnesota’s book series on borderlines, a series described as one concerned with the task of revisioning global politics. It was entirely appropriate that he was the first geographer to
contribute to this series given his role in what was then the nascent field of critical geopolitics. In its pages he launched a trenchant critique of the representational practices of international politics that mapped global
space. The book subjected the taken-for-granted geographical specifications of power and territory to critical review from a wide range of theoretical perspectives all designed to render strange the geographical constructions of the world map
Solastalgia, place attachment and disruption: insights from a coastal community on the front line
No full textWe explore how solastalgia, a concept that describes distress and inability to derive solace from one’s environment caused by disruptive environmental change, is currently being experienced by a community in southeast Ireland as they struggle to cope with place disruption through loss of a beach by coastal erosion. We analyse relationships between empirical measurements of solastalgia, place attachment and place disruption as well as their association with community outlook for the future. Results
indicate that solastalgia, resulting from loss of place, is experienced by almost half of residents, especially those who have lived in the area >20 years. Seasonal variation exists for residents who experience the highest levels of solastalgia, with expression strongest in summer. We find that solastalgia is positively correlated with place attachment; those having higher levels of place
attachment express stronger feelings of solastalgia and impacts to their lives due to loss of place. Place attachment is most weakly expressed through place dependence, suggesting ongoing adaptation of relationships with place. We find that solastalgia is positively correlated with negative statements regarding future outlook. However, negative outlooks are moderated for those
with high levels of place attachment, despite experiencing solastalgia. Given the vulnerability of coastal environments and communities to climate change, understanding and assessing solastalgia will be critical to helping communities navigate environmental disruption
Regionalization of hydrological models for flow estimation in ungauged catchments in Ireland
No full textStudy Region: The study area consists of 44 catchments across Ireland. Study Focus: We regionalize two hydrological models (GR4J and GR6J) to produce continuous discharge simulations and compare performance in simulating high, median and low flow conditions with other established approaches to prediction in ungauged basins and a simple
benchmark of using the median parameter set across all catchments. These include K-nearest neighbor (KNN) and statistical methods for predicting flow quantiles using catchment characteristics. Different objective functions were selected for different parts of flow regime and the
success of different methods for regionalizing hydrological model parameters; including multiple linear regression (MLR), non-linear regression (NL) and random forests (RF) were evaluated. New Hydrological insights for the Region: All regionalization approaches perform well for average
flow conditions. The GR4J model regionalized using RF performs best for simulating high flows, though all regionalized models underestimate the median annual flood. GR6J regionalized using RF performs best for low flows. While KNN and statistical approaches that directly leverage
physical catchment descriptors provide comparable median performances across catchments, the spread in relative error across our sample is reduced using regionalized hydrological models. Our results highlight that the choice of hydrological model, objective functions for optimization and
approach to linking model parameters and physical catchment descriptors significantly influence the success of regionalization for low and high flows
Reflections on the First Decade of the International Flann O’Brien Society
No full text2021 marks the tenth anniversary of the founding of both the International Flann O’Brien Society and its peer-reviewed journal The Parish Review. The work that has been undertaken by the society and its members in this decade has significantly expanded the scope and profile of Flann O’Brien studies, but also changed how we understand the author Brian O’Nolan and his works in their historical, social, political, cultural, and aesthetic contexts, as well as their legacy to contemporary letters and theory. This note uses the occasion of this anniversary to take stock of these changes and to consider what avenues lie open to the future of the field