NUI Maynooth Eprint Archive
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What death notices tell us about the coronavirus across Ireland
No full textOpinion: a record numbers of death notices were posted to the RIP.ie website in April 2020 for many counties. RTE Brainstorm 7/05/2020
Excess mortality has become a potent indicator of the deadliness of Covid-19, especially against the background of mixed reporting benchmarks and standards between countries. In the Republic of Ireland, it looks like we're not doing too badly nationally by this metric. However, this belies the geographic disparities revealed by that staple of Irish life: the death notices
Understanding Recent Growth Dynamics in Small Urban Places: The Case of New England
No full textThis article utilizes recently published US Census data covering the pre-and post-Great Recession period (1990–2015) to identify key determinants of growth among
small urban places in the New England Region. We find little evidence of random
growth and robust evidence of convergence in growth, indicating that smaller urban
areas tend to experience faster rates of growth than larger ones, over both the short
and long term. Factors such as distance to large city areas and amenities are found
to be particularly relevant to population growth rates. Having a diverse industrial
base, high levels of human capital and proximity to large urban areas are factors that
positively affect income growth. These results highlight the importance of policies
geared to improve cities’ amenities, increase their industrial diversity, and attracting
and retaining human capital in urban areas
H-Space and Loop Space Structures for Intermediate Curvatures
No full textFor dimensions n ≥ 3 and k ∈ {2, · · · , n}, we show that the space of metrics of
k -positive Ricci curvature on the sphere S
n has the structure of an H -space with a homotopy
commutative, homotopy associative product operation. We further show, using the theory of
operads and results of Boardman, Vogt and May that the path component of this space
containing the round metric is weakly homotopy equivalent to an n-fold loop space
Retail Strategy in the Age of Retail Apocalypse – Exploring the Role of Customer Experience Orientation on Retail Performance
No full textThe retailing industry is in constant change and consequences of the digitalisation are visible through dramatic shifts in closing numbers of physical stores. However, in this age of “Retail Apocalypse”, different retailers with different retail formats show different opening/closing conduct. From a competitive strategy view, cost-oriented retailers such as discounter or warehouse clubs show increase in openings, whereas differentiation-oriented retailers such as apparel or luxury retailers show a decline in their store numbers. At the same time, the notion of customer experience emerges as the new imperative in the industry and underlines a new principle to follow in the whole digital transformation process. For retailers, it is now key to generate distinctive customer experience to succeed and comply to the new rulebook of the industry. However, investigating a retailer’s customer experience orientation in the context of opening/closing behaviour remains an open topic in retail research so far. Through a mixed-method approach, this study investigates the relationship between a retailer’s customer experience orientation and retail performance (opening/closing of stores). Findings show on the one hand a possible relation between store openings (closures) and a retailer’s low (high) customer experience orientation and on the other hand a consistency in retail strategy, aligning competitive strategy, customer experience orientation, price orientation, profit strategy and retail format. Implications open further questions on the underlying reasons for the potentially increased vulnerability of high customer experience-oriented retailers
Lonely SARTs: Loneliness and sustained attention in the Irish Longitudinal Study on Ageing
No full textBased on biologically plausible mechanisms and previous research, it is
possible to hypothesize a reciprocal association between sustained
attention and loneliness. We investigated this association using
a cross-lagged modeling approach. Using data from 6,239 participants
aged over 50 in TILDA, a nationally representative study of aging, we
used structural equation models to investigate potential cross-lagged
associations between sustained attention and loneliness, measured at
baseline and again after four years. Sustained attention at baseline had
a small association with loneliness four years later, but loneliness at
baseline was not associated with sustained attention at follow-up.
Auto-regressive associations were strong for both loneliness over
time and sustained attention over time. Sustained attention may
account for a small proportion of the variance in loneliness over time
among older adults, and may constitute a risk factor in the development of loneliness. Implications for the identification of at-risk individuals and the prevention of loneliness are discussed
The University as a Place of Sanctuary: Advocating for Inclusionand Equality for Refugees and Migrants
No full textFor Kurdish novelist and journalist Behrouz Boochani, writing is an ‘act of resistance’. In 2013, he fled persecution in Irandue to cultural activities but on arriving to the Australian territory of Christmas Island, he was exiled to an offshore immigration detention on Manus Island, where he remained for six years under brutal conditions. The novel he wrote there, sent out to a journalist via WhatsApp messages, was awarded one of Australia’s most prestigious literary prizes. Accepting the prize from Manus Island, Boochani described it as ‘a victory for humanity’; a recognition of his art even as the system sought to obliterate the individual identities of the Manus Island detainees. He was formally recognised as a refugee in New Zealand in 2020
Do Response Options in the Implicit Relational Assessment Procedure (IRAP) Matter? A Comparison of Contextual Relations versus Relational Coherent Indicators
No full textEmpirical analysis of features of the Implicit Relational Assessment Procedure may be important to results. As such, the current
research compared effects of response options that were contextually cued relational responses (Crels) versus relational coherence
indicators (RCIs) across two IRAPs conducted with college student participants (N = 40). The IRAPs were similar except for the
response options used, which were either “Same”/“Opposite” (Crels) versus “Accurate”/“Inaccurate” (RCIs). D-scores for both
IRAPs showed the expected IRAP effect (bias). A critical difference was noted dependent upon the type of response options used:
the IRAP effect was shown to be stronger when Crel response options were used. There was no statistically significant interaction
effect shown between response option used and order of completion (i.e., Crel IRAP first vs. RCI IRAP first), however, there was
a statistically significant interaction effect shown between type of response options used on the IRAP, order of completion, and
block-order presentation (consistent trial-blocks vs. inconsistent trial blocks presented first). Findings are discussed regarding
potential implications and further research
The EUSTACE Project: Delivering Global, Daily Information on Surface Air Temperature
No full textDay-to-day variations in surface air temperature affect society in many ways, but daily surface air temperature measurements are not available everywhere. Therefore, a global daily picture cannot be achieved with measurements made in situ alone and needs to incorporate estimates from satellite retrievals. This article presents the science developed in the EU Horizon 2020-funded EUSTACE project (2015-19, www.eustaceproject.org ) to produce global and European multidecadal ensembles of daily analyses of surface air temperature complementary to those from dynamical reanalyses, integrating different ground-based and satellite-borne data types. Relationships between surface air temperature measurements and satellite-based estimates of surface skin temperature over all surfaces of Earth (land, ocean, ice, and lakes) are quantified. Information contained in the satellite retrievals then helps to estimate air temperature and create global fields in the past, using statistical models of how surface air temperature varies in a connected way from place to place; this needs efficient statistical analysis methods to cope with the considerable data volumes. Daily fields are presented as ensembles to enable propagation of uncertainties through applications. Estimated temperatures and their uncertainties are evaluated against independent measurements and other surface temperature datasets. Achievements in the EUSTACE project have also included fundamental preparatory work useful to others, for example, gathering user requirements, identifying inhomogeneities in daily surface air temperature measurement series from weather stations, carefully quantifying uncertainties in satellite skin and air temperature estimates, exploring the interaction between air temperature and lakes, developing statistical models relevant to non-Gaussian variables, and methods for efficient computation
Use of automatic radiosonde launchers to measure temperature and humidity profiles from the GRUAN perspective
No full textIn the last two decades, technological progress has not only seen improvements to the quality of atmospheric upper-air observations but also provided the opportunity to design and implement automated systems able to replace measurement procedures typically performed manually. Radiosoundings, which remain one of the primary data sources for weather and climate applications, are still largely performed around the world manually, although increasingly fully automated upper-air observations are used, from urban areas to the remotest locations, which minimize operating costs and challenges in performing radiosounding launches. This analysis presents a first step to demonstrating the reliability of the automatic radiosonde launchers (ARLs) provided by Vaisala, Meteomodem and Meisei. The metadata and datasets collected by a few existing ARLs operated by the Global Climate Observing System (GCOS) Reference Upper-Air Network (GRUAN) certified or candidate sites (Sodankyla, Payerne, Trappes, Potenza) have been investigated and a comparative analysis of the technical performance (i.e. manual versus ARL) is reported. The performance of ARLs is evaluated as being similar or superior to those achieved with the traditional manual launches in terms of percentage of successful launches, balloon burst and ascent speed. For both temperature and relative humidity, the ground-check comparisons showed a negative bias of a few tenths of a degree and % RH, respectively. Two datasets of parallel soundings between manual and ARL-based measurements, using identical sonde models, provided by Sodankyla and Faa'a stations, showed mean differences between the ARL and manual launches smaller than +/- 0.2 K up to 10 hPa for the temperature profiles. For relative humidity, differences were smaller than 1 % RH for the Sodankyla dataset up to 300 hPa, while they were smaller than 0.7 % RH for Faa'a station. Finally, the observation-minusbackground (O-B) mean and root mean square (rms) statistics for German RS92 and RS41 stations, which operate a mix of manual and ARL launch protocols, calculated using the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) forecast model, are very similar, although RS41 shows larger rms(O-B) differences for ARL stations, in particular for temperature and wind. A discussion of the potential next steps proposed by GRUAN community and other parties is provided, with the aim to lay the basis for the elaboration of a strategy to fully demonstrate the value of ARLs and guarantee that the provided products are traceable and suitable for the creation of GRUAN data products