NUI Maynooth Eprint Archive
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Building Specifications in the Event-B Institution: A Summary
No full textThis “journal-first” paper summarises a publication by the
same authors in the journal Logical Methods in Computer Science which
describes a formal semantics for the Event-B specification language using
the theory of institutions. It defines an institution for Event-B and shows
how the constructs of the Event-B specification language can be mapped
into our institution. This algebraic semantics distinguishes three constituent sub-languages of Event-B: the superstructure, infrastructure and
mathematical languages. An important impact of this work is that our
semantics provides access to the generic modularisation constructs available in institutions, including specification-building operators for parameterisation and refinement. We demonstrate how these features subsume and enhance the corresponding features already present in Event-B
through a detailed study of their use in a worked example. Further benefits of the institutional approach are its provision for mathematically
definable interoperability to facilitate heterogeneous specification
Evaluating International Agreements: The Voluntarist Reply and its Limits
No full textHow should the fact of state consent to international agreements affect their moral evaluation? Political criticism of the content of international agreements is often answered by invoking the voluntary nature of those agreements: if states did not wish to accept their terms then they were free to reject them; the fact of their having voluntarily accepted them limits the scope for subsequent criticism. This is the “Voluntarist Reply”. This paper examines the Voluntarist Reply to understand the specific moral work that it claims to do, the sense of voluntariness that it requires, and the limits on the capacity of voluntary consent to answer substantive political and moral criticism . It maps those limits across four prominent and plausible accounts of international economic justice to understand the different ways that consent does or does not alter the moral situation
UAV-Aided Post-Disaster Cellular Networks: A Novel Stochastic Geometry Approach
No full textMotivated by the need for ubiquitous and reliable
communications in post-disaster emergency management systems
(EMSs), we hereby present a novel and efficient stochastic geometry
(SG) framework. This mathematical model is specifically designed
to evaluate the quality of service (QoS) experienced by a typical
ground user equipment (UE) residing either inside or outside a
generic area affected by a calamity. In particular, we model the
functioning terrestrial base stations (TBSs) as an inhomogeneous
Poisson point process (IPPP), and assume that a given number of
uniformly distributed unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) equipped
with cellular transceivers is deployed in order to compensate for the
damage suffered by some of the existing TBSs. The downlink (DL)
coverage probability is then derived based on the maximum average
received power association policy and the assumption of Nakagamim fading conditions for all wireless links. The proposed numerical
results show insightful trends in terms of coverage probability, depending on: distance of the UE from the disaster epicenter, disaster
radius, quality of resilience (QoR) of the terrestrial network, and
fleet of deployed ad-hoc aerial base stations (ABSs). The aim of
this paper is therefore to prove the effectiveness of vertical heterogeneous networks (VHetNets) in emergency scenarios, which can
both stimulate the involved authorities for their implementation
and inspire researchers to further investigate related problems
Exploring school-university partnerships: the roles, experiences, and interactions of student teachers, cooperating teachers, and placement tutors
No full textThe importance of school-university partnerships has featured in teacher education agendas, legislation, and policies in the Republic of Ireland for the past thirty years, with partnerships primarily occurring during Initial Teacher Education programmes. Partnership at this juncture involves placement tutors from universities, cooperating teachers from schools, and student teachers during school placement. Despite the value placed on school-university partnerships, much of the research has highlighted that student teachers receive inequitable support during school placement. This study sought to understand why this may be the case by investigating the experiences of student teachers, cooperating teachers, and placement tutors (the triad) during partnerships, as well as how each triad member perceives their own role and the role of other triad members. Consequently, I aimed to illuminate the challenges and opportunities associated with school-university partnerships.
An interpretivist qualitative approach was employed and was structured through the lens of a social theory of learning framework. The research setting was one concurrent post-primary Initial Teacher Education programme and schools linked to the same programme. The participants included four student teachers, four cooperating teachers, and four placement tutors, who took part in semi-structured interviews and focus groups. A qualitative questionnaire also gathered the opinions of eight principals and four pedagogy lecturers. The findings were analysed using reflexive thematic analysis. Three overarching themes were extracted from the dataset. Firstly, ‘the impact of communication on practice’ illustrated that some participants were unaware of guidelines pertaining to school placement, while others revealed they do not engage with the guidelines. Additionally, some participants are reluctant to engage in professional conversations, in part owing to power dynamics or a lack of confidence. Secondly, ‘the complexities of relationships across the landscape of practice’ revealed that each member of the partnership is valued but this materialises in different ways. Time is also a crucial feature in building relationships, but relationships are fragile, with assessment and the goodwill of schools playing a key role in partner interactions. Thirdly, ‘forming and supporting partnerships across the landscape of practice’ shows that most participants believe partnerships are effective, but partnerships are understood differently amongst participants, with some indicating that partnerships can happen beyond school placement. An analysis of the three themes highlighted that there were different levels of access, support, and participation for triad members as they boundary cross during school placement, with some responsibilities claimed, while others were displaced. This resulted in varying levels of partnerships at play. This study makes recommendations based on these findings and contributes to teacher education by providing a frame that helps to understand dyadic and triadic interactions of the triad within a wider landscape of practice
Driving the Decarbonizing City: The role of electric vehicles in Dublin’s sustainability transition.
No full textThe notion of ‘sustainability transition’ has recently gained traction in human geography. At issue are the emerging dynamics and material configurations underlying the spaces, modalities, and pathways associated with decarbonisation. This thesis examines the role of electric vehicles (EVs) and associated infrastructures in sustainability transitions in Dublin, Ireland. The Irish government, driven in large part by regulations set at the EU level, has introduced a series of initiatives to establish an EV market in Ireland. In turn, Dublin has become a key location for state-led but market-oriented experimental projects and interventions aimed at facilitating the sale and use of EVs. Many of these projects fail to live up to the sustainability hype and tend to enrol users in the promotion, management, and governance of decarbonisation in chaotic but as-of-yet uncharted ways. Against this general backdrop, I draw upon scholarship on the multi-level perspective (MLP), urban political ecology (UPE), and Marxian approaches to urban development to examine how the emergence of alliances between public and private actors alongside EV users produce new practices, spaces, and fixes aimed at shaping the shift towards in EVs in Dublin. I use a qualitative analysis of 72 semi-structured interviewers with the ‘drivers’ who steer the shift towards EVs: 39 EV users; 23 representatives from Irish and international firms operating in and around the EV sector (e.g., automotive dealerships and charge point installation companies); and ten interviews with respondents from the public sector and regulatory bodies. I advance a theoretical framework, which I refer to as Critical Urban Transition Studies (CUTS), to analyse the differentiated structures, agency, and power relations that underpin Dublin’s sustainability transition. By applying CUTS to Dublin, I examine how neoliberalization is entangled with relations, actions, and pathways that underpin the shift towards EVs. As a result, an inadequate, disordered, and unequal decarbonisation project emerges that exerts pressure on the actors involved to forge alliances that are capable of pivoting, circumventing, or fixing, for a time at least, some of the tensions emerging from the chaotic unfolding of EVs and associated infrastructures in the city. I make three wider contributions to geographical knowledge: First, I identify several ways that neoliberal policymaking and experimentation affect urban sustainability transitions; second, I expand on the concept of cross-class alliances to examine how coalitions between technology users and public and private sector actors shape the city; finally, I build on the notion of ‘the glitch’ to apprehend the relationship between neoliberalism and digital technologies in shaping decarbonisation
Democratising Case Law while Teaching Students
No full textThis article draws on qualitative student feedback and lecturer experience to
provide a guide for educators who are interested in creating Wikipedia article based assignments. Using legal cases as an example, this article details how
these assignments can encourage students to deepen their understanding of a
topic and consider how knowledge can be communicated effectively. In
particular, this article focuses on how educators outside of the United States
and Canada can navigate Wikipedia’s bureaucracy and how they and their
students can contribute information of relevance to smaller jurisdictions on a
publicly-accessible repository. This article begins by addressing concerns that
educators may have with student use of Wikipedia, while highlighting
pedagogical benefits for students who write Wikipedia articles. It goes on to
provide a guide for educators who want to create a Wikipedia article writing
assignment – in particular, the preparatory steps required to make the
assignment effective, how to support students in their writing journey, and how
to better ensure that student-authored articles remain available on Wikipedia
once uploaded. This article concludes by encouraging educators to consider
using Wikipedia as an educational tool, and to teach their students how they
can use Wikipedia article writing to contribute to public knowledge
PCP complexes of Titanium in the +3 and +4 oxidation states
No full textTi(IV) and Ti(III) complexes using the tBuPCP ligand have been synthesized (tBuPCP = C6H3-2,6-(CH2PtBu2)2). The [tBuPCP]Li synthon can be reacted with TiCl4(THF)2 to form (tBuPCP)TiCl3 (1) in limited yields due to significant reduction of the titanium synthon. The Ti(III) complex (tBuPCP)TiCl2 (2) has been further characterized. This can have half an equivalent of halide abstracted to form [{(tBuPCP)TiCl}2{μ-Cl}][B(C6F5)4] (3) and can also be methylated, forming (tBuPCP)TiMe2 (4). All the Ti(III) complexes have been characterized using EPR and X-ray crystallography, giving insight into their electronic structures, which are further supported by DFT calculations
On the dynamic reconfigurable implementations of MISTY1 and KASUMI block ciphers
No full textNovel hardware architectures for dynamic reconfigurable implementation of 64-bit MISTY1
and KASUMI block ciphers are proposed to enhance the performance of cryptographic
chips for secure IoT applications. The SRL32 primitive (Reconfigurable Look up Tables—
RLUTs) and DPR (Dynamic Partial Reconfiguration) are employed to reconfigure single
round MISTY1 / KASUMI algorithms on the run-time. The RLUT based architecture attains
dynamic logic functionality without extra hardware resources by internally modifying the
LUT contents. The proposed adaptive reconfiguration can be adopted as a productive countermeasure against malicious attacks with the added advantage of less reconfiguration time
(RT). On the other hand, the block architecture reconfigures the core hardware by externally
uploading the partial bit stream and has significant advantages in terms of low area implementation and power reduction. Implementation was carried out on FPGA, Xilinx Virtex 7.
The results showed remarkable results with very low area of 668 / 514 CLB slices consuming 460 / 354 mW for RLUT and DPR architectures respectively. Moreover, the throughput
obtained for RLUT architecture was found as 364 Mbps with very less RT of 445 nsec while
DPR architecture achieved speed of 176 Mbps with RT of 1.1 msec. The novel architectures
outperform the stand-alone existing hardware designs of MISTY1 and KASUMI implementations by adding the dynamic reconfigurability while at the same achieving high performance in terms of area and throughput. Design details of proposed unified architectures
and comprehensive analysis is described
Disability inclusion and structural change: Understanding the relationship between stakeholders in the United Nations Partnership on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNPRPD) programme.
No full textGlobal policies, frameworks and programmes have emerged to address the exclusion of
persons with disabilities and their fundamental rights. Existing evidence aligns on the need to
comprehensively understand and address disability rights initiatives in theory and practice, and
this PhD contributes to the body of knowledge through examination of the United Nations
Partnership on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNPRPD). It seeks to fill critical gaps in
knowledge surrounding the mechanisms and processes of structural change in disability inclusive
development.
The existing literature highlights a dearth of comprehensive research on disability rights
within international development programmes. This gap is particularly evident in the limited
exploration of the practical application of Theory of Change (ToC) frameworks and the
dynamics of social dominance in disability inclusive development initiatives. Moreover, there is
a lack of in-depth studies examining such rights-based projects in context as countries seek to
implement the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD).
The primary research question driving this thesis is: "Is the UNPRPD programme
triggering structural change, and if so, how?" This overarching question guides the study's aims,
which include examining the UNPRPD programme in the context of global UN frameworks,
understanding the influence of capital and dominance, and investigating the processes behind the
UNPRPD programme from the perspective of multiple stakeholders.
The research employs a multi-faceted methodology that combines qualitative and
quantitative approaches. Theoretical and desk analyses grounded the UNPRPD programme
against the existing literature and assisted in framing the country studies that followed. Case
studies in Uruguay and Serbia provide insights into the practical application of ToC, capital and
social dominance theories, while statistical and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) analyses
of census data offer a perspective on disability inclusion challenges. This methodological
diversity enhances the depth and breadth of the research.
The research findings reveal several key insights. Stakeholder engagement dynamics
significantly impacted project outcomes, with Uruguay revealing challenges in involving
individuals with disabilities and Serbia highlighting the value of pre-established relationships
between United Nations Country Team (UNCT) representatives and civil society. Second, the
research underscores the need for adaptive and iterative Theory of Change (ToC) frameworks,
developed collaboratively based on diverse partner experiences, to address potential gaps in
stakeholder perspectives and enhance disability inclusion initiatives. Lastly, social dominance
and capital theories prove instrumental in understanding the multifaceted nature of structural
change within disability inclusive development, considering both historical and contemporary
forces. Overall, these findings hold meaningful implications for policymakers, practitioners, and
advocacy groups, providing valuable insights for effectively navigating the intricacies of
disability inclusion.
In conclusion, this thesis contributes to a more nuanced understanding of disability
inclusion in international development by addressing existing gaps in the literature. It
emphasizes the need for dynamic and iterative ToC frameworks in programmatic evaluations and
the importance of considering capital and social dominance theories in disability inclusive
development
Making Mallorcan mischief: translating, rehearsing, and performing the Entremès del Pasquedó at the 2022 Out of the Wings Festival
No full textCatalan-language theatre from the Middle Ages is completely unknown in the
Anglophone world, even though the Catalan Countries have rich performance histories from this
historical period. An unknowing audience presents both opportunities and challenges to any theatre
translator, but the transition from page to stage is not a simple transaction. Considering translation
as a space for playful probing and creative intervention, this article reflects on the rehearsal process
for the Mallorcan cuckoldry play, l’Entremès del Pasquedó, which was performed as part of the Out
of the Wings festival in the summer of 2022. By looking at how the rehearsal process led to
(re)translating, as well as (re)negotiating the jump from text to body, this article highlights that
theatre translation is a never-ending process and, much like texts from the Middle Ages, it can
continually be reimagined and reworked in new contexts