NUI Maynooth Eprint Archive
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What are the differences between gun laws in Republican voting states such as Florida, versus Democratic voting states such as New York?
No full textGun laws in America are often a topic of conversation, especially in times where guns have
either proven helpful or dangerous in different circumstances. This research project aims to
identify why certain Republican states, such as Florida and certain Democratic states such as
New York have such different views on gun laws. Additionally, this project will examine the
impact different gun laws have on school shootings. The data for this project was collected
through numerous secondary sources. Reasons why people may be for and why people may be
against owning a gun are outlined in this paper. Other aspects that will be explored within this
paper will examine the NRA, young people and gun violence, race and gun violence, media
and gun ownership as well as public opinion from gun ownership. All of these findings display
that gun violence is a major issue in the US and there is a need to change the second
Amendment of the US Constitution. However it is also important to recognise that gun culture
in America is not a part of the US that will be removed., as it plays such a major role in many
people’s lives
The Birth and Development of Sports Video Games From the 1950s to the Early 1980s
No full textThis article provides an overview of the origins and early development of sports
video games. The first generation of sports video games were developed by
scientists in laboratories for academic purposes. Together with the rise of
microcomputers and the widespread adoption of television (TV) sets, commercial
video games began to emerge in the early 1970s. Like their laboratory predecessors, most of the first-generation commercial games were sports-themed and
primarily designed as a platform for competition between players. In the second
half of the 1970s, ball-and-paddle-based games began to be replaced by more
sophisticated games adopting the rules and actions of real-life sports. By the late
1970s and early 1980s, intense competition between video game companies gave
birth to many innovative titles, with various sports disciplines adapted into games.
Most of the sports games created in this period were based on competitive sports
including American football, basketball, baseball, soccer, and tennis, as well as
recreational sports like bowling, pool, and darts, many of them long popular in
Western Europe and North America, some with a huge fan base in Japan. They
were clearly produced to cater to the needs of gamers and sports fans in the
world’s three major TV, personal computer, video game, and sports markets at the
time
Land Law and Land Use
No full textThis article, which is part of the North–South Legal Mapping Project, considers land law and land use in each jurisdiction on the island of Ireland. The first part provides a sketch of the basic structures of land law, identifying a remarkable level of convergence (or, more accurately, absence of divergence), which is only partially qualified by recent comprehensive land law reform in Ireland, notwithstanding the absence of comparable reforms in Northern Ireland. The second part considers land use, where there is greater (and increasing) potential for divergence, particularly in environmental governance. The article sketches and explains core influencing factors that have shaped the evolution of environmental governance on the island to date, before considering how Brexit and subsequent developments impact regulatory alignment across the island. It focuses on the issue of water protection and river basin management, in light of the three transboundary river basins on the island
The Indicative Mood: A Response to Margaret Bent
No full textwhile jacobus’s ‘moderns’ (moderni) may have been the same people who were composing motets and beginning to formulate innovative theoretical concepts in the 1320s, to conflate all the musical activities of the individuals Jacobus calls ‘the moderns’ with the phenomenon of the ‘ars nova’, as Margaret Bent’s recent review in this journal does, is not something that my book Music and the moderni explicitly proposes
Living in a Legal Utopia: The Gap Between Law and Lived Experiences for LGBTI Activists in South Africa
No full textSouth Africa is applauded for being the first country in the world to provide
constitutional protection from discrimination to LGBTI people. However, high
rates of discrimination, threats, and violence against LGBTI people persist.
Against this backdrop, this dissertation explores the lived experiences of LGBTI
activists in South Africa and how people navigate the gaps between the law as
prescribed and every day lived experiences. Adopting an intersectional feminist,
anti-racist, and decolonial framework, this project layers archival material with
contemporary experiences and examines ways in which non-heterosexual and
gender non-conforming people in South Africa (re)make spaces of queer
resistance from spaces of vulnerability. This was done through a combination of
semi-structured interviews, focus groups, and participant observation, along
with immersion in several archives. Particular attention was paid to the layers
of legal meaning inherited from colonisation and apartheid, which continue to
reverberate into the present. I demonstrate how anti-sodomy laws moved
intact across the British Empire and how the vague language utilised by
lawmakers has contributed to anti-LGBTI attitudes. Drawing from nine-months
of fieldwork conducted between June 2017 and September 2018, I argue that
violence is displaced in the public imaginary allowing participants to engage in
place-based activities that nurture feelings of belonging and (precarious) safety.
I further argue for understandings of multiple types of queer space and explore
how participants navigate the inherent tensions between NGO-mandated queer
spaces and more fluid queer spaces that are often fleeting and temporary. This
research also offers insights into place-based activities in which solidarities are
built and nurtured, both within and beyond LGBTI communities in the present
and in the past. Ultimately, this dissertation contributes to scholarship that
unsettles binary thinking about good and bad places to be gay, offering insights
into (re)making queer spaces and nurturing solidarities as part of imagining a
better future
Exploring the potential of novel Pellino2-targeted compounds to control pathways and cells that drive inflammation and cancer
No full textSmall molecule drugs have emerged as valuable therapeutic agents in the treatment of
inflammation and cancer. However, there is still a need to identify additional molecular
targets amenable to therapeutic exploitation. Pellino proteins form a three-membered
family of E3 ubiquitin ligases, and an understanding of their crucial roles in regulating
innate immunity and cancer is emerging. This understanding is largely gleaned from
the use of experimental models, ranging from over-expression studies and gene
knockdown/knockout approaches in cell models and the use of Pellino-deficient mice
in disease models. Despite this, the potential to pharmacologically target Pellino
proteins for therapeutic application in the treatment of inflammatory diseases or cancer
remains largely unexplored. No candidate molecules have been described to date that
effectively mimic or promote their function. However, recent work from my host
laboratory has led to the design of two novel compounds intended to target Pellino
proteins, especially Pellino2. This body of work aimed to investigate the regulatory
effects of these novel compounds on the pathways and cells that drive inflammation,
inflammatory diseases, and colorectal cancer. Initial studies identified that both
compounds effectively inhibit inflammatory responses by targeting and facilitating the
degradation of IRAK1. This led to the down-regulation of the NF-κB signaling pathway
and the suppression of the expression of pro-inflammatory cytokines (e.g., IL-1β, IL-6,
and TNFα) in a Pellino2-dependent manner. These effects were manifested at non�cytotoxic concentrations. Further studies supported a novel role for Pellino2 in
protecting against pro-tumorigenic effects in colorectal cancer. The research revealed a
down-regulation of human Pellino2 mRNA in colorectal cancer patients and cells, and a deletion of the Pellino2 gene in mice led to an increased tumor burden in preclinical
models of colorectal cancer. The studies also demonstrated that human Pellino2
suppresses the growth and proliferation of colorectal cancer cells by promoting cell
apoptosis. In promoting this pro-apoptotic effect, Pellino2 was shown to target the
ubiquitination and degradation of Bcl-xL. Interestingly, while neither of the novel
compounds designed to target Pellino2 consistently inhibited colorectal cancer cell
growth, they did enhance the sensitivity of colorectal cancer cells to the cytotoxic
effects of the chemotherapeutic agent Cisplatin in a Pellino2-dependent manner.
Overall, this work reveals the promising potential of these novel compounds in
targeting the pathways and cells that drive inflammatory diseases and colorectal cancer.
It also highlights Pellino proteins as potential therapeutic targets in the development of
innovative anti-inflammatory and anti-cancer therapeutic
Land, society and politics in Co. Carlow, 1879 – 1960
No full textThe abstract is included in the text
Special issue on data mining and data privacy
No full textThis special issue encompasses fourteen papers that focus on different aspects related to data science. This ranges from
supervised and unsupervised machine learning algorithms to extract knowledge from data, to data protection procedures
to ensure that the knowledge extracted is privacy-preserving
A Systematic Review of Forensic Approaches to Disasters: Gaps and Challenges
No full textDisaster forensic approaches aim to identify the causes of disasters to support disaster risk management. However, few studies
have conducted a systematic literature review of scientific articles that labeled themselves as a forensic approach to disasters.
This article provides a qualitative analysis of these forensic studies, focusing on five main issues: (1) the methodologies
applied; (2) the forensic approaches used in the disaster risk management phases; (3) the hazards addressed; (4) if the methodologies
involve social participation, and using what types of participation; and (5) if there are references to urban planning in the scientific studies analyzed. Our results showed a predominance of the Forensic Investigations of Disasters (FORIN) and Post-Event Review Capability (PERC) methodologies used in isolation or combination. There is a need for methodologiesthat engage people in participatory FORIN, fostering the co-production of knowledge and action research approache
Compatibility of braiding and fusion on wire networks
No full textExchanging particles on graphs, or more concretely on networks of quantum wires, has been proposed
as a means to perform fault tolerant quantum computation. This was inspired by braiding of anyons
in planar systems. However, exchanges on a graph are not governed by the usual braid group
but instead by a graph braid group. By imposing compatibility of graph braiding with fusion of
topological charges, we obtain generalized hexagon equations. We find the usual planar anyons
solutions but also more general braid actions. We illustrate this with Abelian, Fibonacci and Ising
fusion rules