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Interdisciplinary doctoral research networks: enhancers and inhibitors of social capital development
No full textInterdisciplinary research networks are increasing, with professionals
encouraged to undertake research across disciplines to increase
innovation, creativity and knowledge. More recently, this interdisciplinary
focus is being mirrored by the establishment of interdisciplinary doctoral
research networks. But do these networks work? And if so, how and why?
We employ social capital theory to (a) understand the lived experiences of
students in interdisciplinary doctoral programmes and (b) build
programme design theory to support the development of social capital
within such programmes. We present the results of 28 semi-structured
interviews conducted with doctoral students from three European Union
funded interdisciplinary research training networks to understand how
they perceive the enhancers, inhibitors and manifestations of social
capital within their networks. Key themes revolve around ‘extracting value
from the interdisciplinary process’, ‘motivating students throughout the
interdisciplinary programme journey’, and ‘relating to others both within
and external to the programme’. We propose a framework for
interdisciplinary programme design
Whose story: Working towards diversity in the Maynooth University Library Collections
No full textAn increasing focus on issues of diversity and inclusion have been prompting librarians to reconsider their collections and what they represent. This essay reflects on the history of the collections in both Maynooth University and St. Patricks College Maynooth considers several relevant examples and suggest ways in which a more diverse and open collection can be achieved
On Optimal Quantized Non-Bayesian Quickest Change Detection with Energy Harvesting
No full textIn this paper, we consider a problem of decentralized
non-Bayesian quickest change detection using a wireless sensor
network where the sensor nodes are powered by harvested energy
from the environment. The underlying random process being
monitored by the sensors is subject to change in its distribution
at an unknown but deterministic time point, and the sensors
take samples (sensing) periodically, compute the likelihood ratio
based on the distributions before and after the change, quantize
it and send it to a remote fusion centre (FC) over fading channels for performing a sequential test to detect the change. Due
to the unpredictable and intermittent nature of harvested energy
arrivals, the sensors need to decide whether they want to sense,
and at what rate they want to quantize their information before
sending them to the FC, since higher quantization rates result in
higher accuracy and better detection performance, at the cost of
higher energy consumption. We formulate an optimal sensing and
quantization rate allocation problem (in order to minimize the
expected detection delay subject to false alarm rate constraint)
based on the availability (at the FC) of non-causal and causal
information of sensors’ energy state information, and channel
state information between the sensors and the FC. Motivated
by the asymptotically inverse relationship between the expected
detection delay (under a vanishingly small probability of false
alarm) and the Kullback-Leibler (KL) divergence measure at
the FC, we maximize an expected sum of the KL divergence
measure over a finite horizon to obtain the optimal sensing and
quantization rate allocation policy, subject to energy causality
constraints at each sensor. The optimal solution is obtained using
a typical dynamic programming based technique, and based on
the optimal quantization rate, the optimal quantization thresholds are found by maximizing the KL information measure per
slot. We also provide suboptimal threshold design policies using
uniform quantization and an asymptotically optimal quantization policy for higher number of quantization bits. We provide
an asymptotic approximation for the loss due to quantization of
the KL measure, and also consider an alternative optimization
problem with minimizing the expected sum of the inverse the
KL divergence measure as the cost per time slot. Numerical
results are provided comparing the various optimal and suboptimal quantization strategies for both optimization problem formulations, illustrating the comparative performance of these
strategies at different regimes of quantization rates
How 1968 Changed the World: Movements Making History, History Making Movements
No full textAs activists in social movements, we live in the shadow of the “long 1968”, the wave of struggles that shook the world from the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s. This is as true in Prague or Derry, with their very different movement histories, as it is in Paris or Chicago, in Bologna or in Mexico City. How we challenge power today, what movements we ally with, how we think about possible futures and how we organise ourselves still depends on the decisive historical moment that was 1968. This article does not seek to celebrate (or condemn) 1968, but to understand a legacy which shapes our own movement landscapes – in order to be better able to think forward to another, more successful attempt at transformation
Social movements
No full textThe changing meanings of “social movement” sketch a history of the past quarter-millennium of popular struggles to change the world: how people have organized themselves and understood their activity. The term appeared in mid-nineteenth century Europe to grasp the French Revolution, the pan-European revolutions of 1848, and the rise of democratic, nationalist and socialist organizations. Contemporary elites were experiencing a disconcerting shift, mapped in the changing meanings of “society” away from the small world of those who counted, as in the capitalized usage of “Society”, when others (the vast majority) could be expected to “know their place” (Williams 1983). Earlier elites, then, could understand the human world purely in terms of political theory or economics. Our use of “society” to refer to all human beings and their interrelationships came into being as those others stepped out of “their place”, raising “the social question”
Forms of social movement in the crisis: a view from Ireland
No full textMedia coverage and public discussion of the coronavirus crisis has focussed primarily on what states and governments do and what they should do about it: about the relationship between epidemiology and policies. Within the global North at least, public health is seen as being ultimately the responsibility of the state, despite neoliberal strategies aiming to dodge this responsibility and a legacy of hollowing out and privatising public health
Thinking inside the box: Optimal policy towards a footloose R&D‐intensive firm
No full textWe derive the optimal policy mix of Research and Development (R&D)‐subsidies and corporate tax rates towards a footloose R&D‐intensive firm. In-creasing R&D‐subsidies strengthens the firm's incentive to offshore production. The firm's home government can offset this by offering an appropriate corporate tax concession. The optimal policy package exhibits a “Matthew principle”: higher R&D‐subsidies should typically be accompanied by lower tax rates. However, if the R&D‐subsidy exceeds a crucial threshold, a tax concession can no longer prevent offshoring. We find that it is never optimal to raise tax rates as R&D‐subsidies increase
Perceived overweight and suicidality among US adolescents from 1999 to 2017
No full textIdentifying oneself as overweight is a risk factor for poor mental health and suicidality independent from objective weight status. The stigma associated with heavier body weight has risen in recent decades and this may have exacerbated the detrimental mental health effects of perceived overweight. In this study, we examined the association between perceived overweight and suicidality in a nationally representative sample (N = 115,180) of US adolescents assessed from 1999 to 2017. We drew on data from the Youth Risk Behavior survey, a biennial population-based survey of students in grades 9-12. Suicidality was gauged by participant reports of past-year suicidal ideation, suicide plans, or suicide attempts. Across all waves, perceived overweight (vs. perceived "normal" weight) predicted a 7.7 percentage point (p < 0.001) increased risk of suicidality after adjustment for age, sex, ethnicity, and BMI. The risk of suicidality associated with perceived overweight increased from 5.7 percentage points in 1999-2001 to 10.1 points in 2015-2017, a difference of 4.4 points (p = 0.001). This growth was most evident after 2009 and was apparent across suicidality measures. Among US adolescents, perceiving one's body as overweight increases risk of suicidality and this risk appears to have grown substantially from 2009 to 2017
5G NR CA-Polar Maximum Likelihood Decoding by GRAND
No full textCA-Polar codes have been selected for all control channel communications in 5G NR, but accurate, computationally feasible decoders are still subject to development. Here we report the performance of a recently proposed class of optimally precise Maximum Likelihood (ML) decoders, GRAND, that can be used with any block-code. As published theoretical results indicate that GRAND is computationally efficient for short- length, high-rate codes and 5G CA-Polar codes are in that class, here we consider GRAND's utility for decoding them. Simulation results indicate that decoding of 5G CA-Polar codes by GRAND, and a simple soft detection variant, is a practical possibility
Noise Recycling
No full textWe introduce Noise Recycling, a method that enhances decoding performance of channels subject to correlated noise without joint decoding. The method can be used with any combination of codes, code-rates and decoding techniques. In the approach, a continuous realization of noise is estimated from a lead channel by subtracting its decoded output from its received signal. This estimate is then used to improve the accuracy of decoding of an orthogonal channel that is experiencing correlated noise. In this design, channels aid each other only through the provision of noise estimates post-decoding. In a Gauss-Markov model of correlated noise, we constructively establish that noise recycling employing a simple successive order enables higher rates than not recycling noise. Simulations illustrate noise recycling can be employed with any code and decoder, and that noise recycling shows Block Error Rate (BLER) benefits when applying the same predetermined order as used to enhance the rate region. Finally, for short codes we establish that an additional BLER improvement is possible through noise recycling with racing, where the lead channel is not pre-determined, but is chosen on the fly based on which decoder completes first