NUI Maynooth Eprint Archive
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Why We Follow Narcissistic Leaders
No full textA recent study aimed to understand narcissistic leaders and who is most likely to follow them. The results revealed a few patterns. If you are someone who is always looking out for others, empathizes with others, and seeks harmony and consensus in your team (known as agreeable followers), you are more likely to be susceptible to following a narcissistic leader. If you are someone who gets anxious and worried easily or likes to get started on work projects early on to prevent anxiety as a deadline draws closer (known as neurotic followers), you probably prefer engaging with narcissistic leaders
The “Mind Your Next Dance” (MYND) Programme: a mixed methods study of a mindfulness-based dance movement psychotherapy for people with mild to moderate dementia and their caregivers. Vol. 2
No full textThe abstract is included in the text
Neuromodulation for Mild Cognitive Impairment: Improvements in Spatial Navigation and Associative Memory with Acute Transcutaneous Vagus Nerve Stimulation: VINCI‐AD
No full textBackground
New therapeutic strategies to treat Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) are urgently needed. Transcutaneous Vagus Nerve Stimulation (tVNS) is a neuromodulation technique which uses a handheld device to peripherally stimulate the afferent vagus nerve. tVNS has shown promise in augmenting memory in cognitively healthy populations but data in cognitively impaired populations is sparse.
Method
VINCI‐AD is an investigator‐led, single‐blind, sham‐controlled crossover pilot study assessing the effects of tVNS in amnestic MCI. All participants have MCI (CDR global 0.5) with amnestic neuropsychological profile (RBANS delayed memory index <85). Participants are randomised over 3 study visits to baseline (no stimulation) active stimulation (at the CC of left ear) or sham stimulation (earlobe). Cognitive tests include Face‐Name Association Task (FNAT), Sustained Attention Response Test (SART) and Sea Hero Quest Navigation Test (SHQ) among others.
Result
Interim data analysis of 28 participants is presented (mean age 71.5 (range 55‐85), 17 male, RBANS DMI 73.3 ±11.1). CSF AD biomarkers were positive for 75% (21/28) (AB‐42 460.4pg/ml (± 83.3pg/ml) and p‐tau181 82.5pg/ml [± 53.2pg/ml]) and 78% (22/28) of participants had a Charleston Comorbidity Index of ≥3. Mean tVNS stimulation time pre‐cognitive assessments was 21.2 minutes, with mean amplitude setting during active stimulation of 2.5mA (1.8‐4.5) and sham of 2.0mA (0.9‐3.1). During FNAT, active tVNS had no effect on facial recognition or reaction times, however recall accuracy was significantly improved (69.2% ±3.13) compared to baseline (44.7% ±3.51 p = 0.016) and sham (50.1% ±3.28 p = 0.021) and during active tVNS spatial navigation (38.94sec [±1.68]) was quicker than baseline (51.49sec (±3.2) p = 0.0164) and sham (51.9sec (±3.15) p = 0 .0038). We noted no significant improvements in SART or other cognitive tests performance during tVNS.
Conclusion
tVNS may be a useful complementary tool to augment spatial and associative memory in MCI. Further larger studies are needed to delineate precise settings in this population
Application of ethical AI requirements to an AI solution use-case in healthcare domain
No full textPurpose
This paper aims to describe the results of applying ethical AI requirements to a healthcare use case. The purpose of this study is to investigate the effectiveness of using open educational resources for Trustworthy AI to provide recommendations to an AI solution within the healthcare domain.
Design/methodology/approach
This study utilizes the Hackathon method as its research methodology. Hackathons are short events where participants share a common goal. The purpose of this to determine the efficacy of the educational resources provided to the students. To achieve this objective, eight teams of students and faculty members participated in the Hackathon. The teams made suggestions for healthcare use case based on the knowledge acquired from educational resources. A research team based at the university hosting the Hackathon devised the use case. The healthcare research team participated in the Hackathon by presenting the use case and subsequently analysing and evaluating the utility of the outcomes.
Findings
The Hackathon produced a framework of proposed recommendations for the introduced healthcare use case, in accordance with the EU's requirements for Trustworthy AI.
Research limitations/implications
The educational resources have been applied to one use-case.
Originality/value
This is the first time that open educational resources for Trustworthy AI have been utilized in higher education, making this a novel study. The university hosting the Hackathon has been the coordinator for the Trustworthy AI Hackathon (as partner to Trustworthy AI project)
Stein’s Phenomenology of Grace
No full textStein’s Freedom and Grace (Freiheit und Gnade) phenomenologically describes the experience of grace as the desire, communication, or acceptance of God’s Spirit of Love, accessed in the act of faith motivated by the soul’s otherwise unfulfilled desire for self-mastery. This article first discusses the affordances of Stein’s phenomenology which equip her to see grace as a fulfilment of the natural life of the soul, which is experienced as coming from beyond itself. It then addresses how the individual, personal I fails to satisfy its implicit desire for rational and free action in the natural life of the soul and how, in contrast, its opposite, the graced, liberated life of the soul, allows it to, but not on its own, only through union with God’s Spirit. It proceeds from this existential alternative to show how the treatise unfolds as an investigation of the various a priori possibilities for grace to be experienced and why it makes sense to acknowledge faith as a legitimate source of knowledge, as Stein does in work postdating Freedom and Grace. Finally, it is argued that the treatise is phenomenological in nature and that it does not presuppose either metaphysics or Christian doctrine but instead contributes to underpinning both. This argument simultaneously explains Stein’s own subsequent engagement as a Christian philosopher
Machine-Assisted Proofs for Institutions
No full textInstitution theory is the abstract study of logical systems using category
theory. The theory has expanded since the ’80s to encompass and relate
a wide range of concrete logical systems. But inducting particular logical
systems into the theory can be tiresome—often straightforward, but
repetitive, technical, and prone to error. Worse, such work suffers from
the very problem which motivates abstraction: we find ourselves proving
the same things over and over again.
In this thesis we will describe a framework for easing the process
of constructing institutions and verifying their properties. The goal is
primarily to expedite the verification of those proof obligations most commonly
involved in constructing institutions. We start by encoding the
institution for first-order predicate logic, turning later to the semantics
for the Event-B modelling method. We then explore a particular logic
combination of Event-B and linear temporal logic, as well as some interesting
institution-independent constructions that enable generic logic
combinations and translations—all of which will serve as useful work in
its own right, but also as a demonstration of the framework
Use of SEZs for Development: National Policies of China and India and the Potential Legal Implications
No full textSpecial Economic Zones (SEZs) have proliferated over the past decade and
are leveraged as engines for development, especially in emerging countries, notably
China and India. While much debate has focused on their evolution and economic
performance, laws sustaining and contesting SEZs have received less attention in
academic literature. There is no internationally accepted legal framework to regulate
SEZs, and governments have formulated their own SEZ policies with their respective
national developmental objectives. SEZs policies often involve shifts in regulatory
powers in the legislature and significant room for executive discretion, thus raising
questions about their legal regime at both the domestic policy level and international
economic law. In Section II, the article starts with the SEZ policy experiences in China
and India and their economic performances. Section III compares the differences
between SEZ policies in the two countries. In section IV, the authors argue that despite
the differences in design, institutional characteristics, and economic outcomes of SEZs
in China and India, there are common concerns rooted in the legal regimes that
underpin the potential conflicts with national policy and international obligations.
In Section V, it is concluded and recommended that policymakers should properly
consider the legal regimes governing SEZs and recognize their potential conflicting
regimes
The Impacts of Trade Facilitation Provisions on Fresh Agricultural Products Trade between China and the BRI Countries
No full textTrade facilitation is essential to lowering overall trade costs and increasing economic returns on both the multilateral and regional levels. Trade facilitation is also an integral part of trade agreements and has become an important component of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). This paper adopts a time-varying stochastic frontier gravity model and a trade inefficiency model and assigns values to different trade facilitation provisions to construct relevant indicators to assess the impacts of the trade facilitation provisions of the World Trade Organization Trade Facilitation Agreement (WTO TFA) and regional trade agreements (RTAs) on trade efficiency between China and BRI countries, as well as on the current conditions and challenges of fresh agricultural product trade between China and countries of the BRI, using data from 2011 to 2020. The results show that the size of domestic markets and population positively affect agricultural trade between China and BRI countries, while geographical distance has a negative impact on their scale of trade. Moreover, this study finds that the obligations set out in trade facilitation provisions of RTAs play an important role in improving trade efficiency, and among these trade facilitation obligations improving the legal provisions of “information transparency”, “customs cooperation” and “advance ruling” can significantly improve trade efficiency, however, some measures relating to “formalities” could potentially constitute barriers to trade. This study innovatively carried out an analysis of the impact of trade facilitation provisions on agricultural trade flows and efficiency from the perspectives of international trade law and economics and provides new policy recommendations for BRI countries to support agricultural trade
“Thy Mother’s Glass”: Reflections on Motherhood in Contemporary Adaptations of Shakespeare
No full textThis thesis examines representations of motherhood in key contemporary adaptations of
Shakespeare’s King Lear, Hamlet and The Winter’s Tale, namely Anne Enright’s The Green Road
(2015), Preti Taneja’s We That Are Young (2017), Maggie O’Farrell’s Hamnet (2020), E.K.
Johnston’s Exit, Pursued by a Bear (2016), and Jeanette Winterson’s The Gap of Time (2015). I
examine how these selected novels negotiate the category of mother and ultimately demonstrate
how the novels themselves are producing new representations of motherhood that are
responsive to and indeed constitutive of, the times we live in. To support my analysis, I draw on
three dynamic fields: adaptation studies, feminist Shakespeare studies, and motherhood studies,
which can, I argue, provide mutually illumining insights. Adaptation has emerged as a dynamic
subgenre of Shakespeare criticism and this thesis situates itself within an expanding body of
work that variously revises, challenges, and indeed extends the boundaries of original play texts.
Feminist criticism of Shakespeare is a well-established field in its own right, but I have identified
a significant gap in the critical literature pertaining to motherhood in contemporary
Shakespeare(s). Throughout the twenty-first century, same sex marriage, adoption, reproductive
rights, and more recent reproductive technologies that distinguish the gestational and genetic
mother have expanded the territory of motherhood. The novels analysed here traverse this new
territory to reflect the diversity of mothering practise in the twenty-first century while
simultaneously revealing new insights and engagements with the subterranean maternal energies
within the plays. When explored alongside one another and understood as a network of adapted
Shakespeare sister-texts, these novels are shown to trace missing motherlines within and between
texts that ultimately demonstrates the scope of intertextual, intersectional Shakespeare analysis
New insights into the complex metallo-metabolite nexus in Aspergillus fumigatus Vol. 2
No full textAspergillus fumigatus is a fungal pathogen which represents a serious threat to global
human health, causing over 400,000 cases of invasive aspergillosis per annum. The
natural product celastrol isolated from plants is a physiologically active compound
which can be used to treat a wide variety of conditions. In this study we show the
antifungal properties of celastrol against A. fumigatus under both metal-deplete and
replete conditions. Celastrol growth inhibition is augmented by co-addition of
compound ADL2022, which decreases the inhibitory concentration of celastrol from
> 100 µM to ~ 10 µM in iron-replete conditions. The combination of 0.005% (w/v)
ADL2022 and celastrol in both iron and zinc-deplete and replete liquid cultures
increases the observed inhibitory effect compared to celastrol alone. Celastrol
treatment also alters the production and secretion of iron-scavenging siderophores,
increasing the level of fusarinine C and decreasing the amount of triacetylfusarinine C
produced, in a concentration dependent manner. Label-free quantitative proteomics
reveals molecular insights into the effect of celastrol on the fungus showing that
celastrol, and not ADL2022, is the active agent causing alterations to protein
abundances and influencing growth. Co-addition of 10 µM celastrol and ADL2022
compared to ADL2022 alone for 3 h reveals an altered abundance of 94 proteins. 3 h
incubation with 10 µM celastrol and ADL2022 together compared to celastrol alone
alters the abundance of 7 proteins. Several enzymes from the ergosterol biosynthetic
pathway are uniquely abundant in the combined treatment compared to ADL2022
alone. Generally, DNA/RNA processing proteins and membrane-domain proteins are
most influenced by treatment with celastrol and ADL2022 compared to either
component alone. The antifungal properties of celastrol and ADL2022 offer a potential
alternative treatment strategy for A. fumigatus infections