NUI Maynooth Eprint Archive
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Public Key Cryptography over the Gaussian and Eisenstein Integers
No full textPublic key encryption has been studied in great detail mainly in the context of the
ring of integers. In this thesis, we develop analogues of popular encryption schemes in
the settings of Gaussian and Eisenstein integers. We will specifically study analogues
of the following asymmetric public key encryption schemes: RSA algorithm, Diffie-
Hellman Key Exchange and El Gamal
Non-stationary spatio-temporal extremal processes; an analysis of extreme temperature events in Ireland
No full textClimate change has resulted in extreme events becoming more frequent, intense, and
destructive. It is essential to understand the behaviour of extreme weather processes
for societal preparedness. This thesis focuses on the development of spatio-temporal
statistical models for extremely hot summer and cold winter temperature events in
Ireland, in the context of climate change. To provide reliable estimates of extreme
temperatures of unobserved magnitudes, we rely on asymptotically justified extrapolations
provided by extreme value theory.
Modelling observational weather records is problematic for several reasons. Firstly,
these data tend to have low spatial resolution and contain spatial bias. This thesis
presents a framework to unify information about spatial extreme events using
both historical temperature observations and output from climate models to enrich
the statistical model’s topographic information while addressing spatial bias.
Secondly, observational weather records are incomplete, with sites having different
record lengths as well as missing values. To deal with this issue we develop a spatial
extreme value model which allows for an estimation of the full dependence structure
without imputing or removing spatial observations that are not fully observed.
We identify a lack of a unified measure of extremity in the spatio-temporal context.
Such tools are critical for practitioners to summarise and present risks associated
with non-stationary spatio-temporal extremal processes. To address this gap in
the literature, we develop several novel summary tools to synthesise and visually
communicate non-stationarity in the extreme values of spatio-temporal processes.
We apply our methodology to analyse the extremal behaviour of both summer maximum and winter minimum daily temperatures in Ireland. We characterise
changes on a marginal level (i.e., the behaviour at any location in Ireland) as well
as on a spatial level. For the marginal model, we use spatial covariates derived
from climate model outputs and explore several potential temporal covariates. To
model the spatial extremal dependence, we use an r-Pareto process with H¨usler-
Reiss margins in order to incorporate incomplete spatial observations and apply our
measures of spatio-temporal non-stationarity to simulations from our fitted model
of summer and winter extreme temperatures
Corporate Tax Games: A Case Study of Ireland in the Global Politics of Tax
No full textOptimistic observers have heralded the current, unprecedented global tax reforms as the beginning of the end of the tax haven system. Whether this is the case depends on the (already doubtful) robustness of the proposed reforms and the responses of multi-national corporations and states that have an interest in sustaining international tax competition. Measuring change in this area is no easy task, not least given the ambiguous nature of corporate tax avoidance. Ireland is an ideal example of ambiguity in the world of corporate tax. This is because it has features of a tax haven, and yet, also has features that do not fit the classic description. The thesis studies a particular skill within Ireland’s Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) skillset that is hidden. This is the skill of playing corporate tax games well. A theory of global tax games is developed, defined as institutionalised, reflexive modes of strategic interaction among states and corporations, constituted by the configuration of four fundamental dimensions of tax. These dimensions are the rate of taxation, the jurisdiction which makes the claim, the capital owner responsible for any payment, and the definition of the return upon which the tax is claimed. These dimensions are configured in different ways. Each game has a distinctive ‘internal’ mode of coordination where actors compete, mutually adjust, cooperate and contest over tax claims, over an uncertain period of time, using tax rules and other institutional mechanisms. This approach tracks the evolving and interacting state-corporate engagement across the tax dimensions as a form of ‘infrastructural power’ (Braun, 2020), represented by tax games. By bridging the ‘state-centered’ perspective of the ‘classic’ tax competition literature and the transnationally focused literature associated with corporate ‘global wealth chains’ (Seabrooke and Wigan, 2017), a firmer analytical basis is offered to explore potential change in global tax
Tackling a lingering infirmity: On the nature and warrant of action research in education
No full textThe BERA initiative on promoting Close-to-Practice (CtP) research raises new challenges for action research, particularly as uncertainties about the stand-ing and rigour of action research were expressed in the report of the education panel for the 2015 Research Excellence Framework (REF) in the United Kingdom. The work of tackling these challenges is essential in advancing CtP research, and it discloses, in turn, new possibilities. In this paper we review some pioneer-ing developments in action research and analyse the difficulties it has experienced in securing parity of standing with other forms of research. We argue that action research is more than, and sometimes other than, a social science. We seek to show that if action research is to be recognised by credentials that are its own, and judged by criteria that are proper to it, not only does it lose any lower standing. Rather, it becomes a major pathway, with deep roots in the criti-cal traditions of Western practical philosophy, through which the defining purposes of education itself, as a distinctive human practice, are ascertained and affirmed, pursued and appraised
A Process-Based Analysis of Cognitive Defusion in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy
No full textCognitive defusion is among the main components of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), a contextual behavioral approach to psychotherapy. Defusion serves as a middle-level term, and, as such, may be useful for applying and disseminating behavior science, despite its lower precision. However, some authors argue that for middle-level terms in psychotherapy to be useful to clinicians, they need to be clearly linked to basic behavioral concepts, with higher precision; and that this is not currently the case with defusion. Our objective is to increase the pragmatic utility of the concept of “cognitive defusion” by providing a more nuanced, multifaceted and process-based definition of the term. In order to do this, we surveyed the ACT literature regarding defusion and critically examined it through the lens of conceptual analysis. This culminated in a revised and updated conceptualization of defusion in terms of its relationship to basic behavioral concepts, in which defusion is an outcome that may be achieved through different processes
Desired Status Report in Inclusive Education.
No full textIn this report we sum up the findings of previous
tasks and summarize all the data that we have
received from the desk research and open
consultation process with teachers and
stakeholders regarding the desired state in terms of
inclusiveness
How principals and teachers in mainstream primary schools in a Dublin postal district support inclusion as they mediate the ‘new model’ of special education teacher allocation.
No full textThe last four decades have been characterised by a movement towards inclusive education globally. While Ireland has been slow to move in that direction significant progress has been made in providing support for students with special educational needs (SEN) in Irish schools. This study examines how the most recent Department of Education (DE) policy initiative to provide additional teaching support to students with SEN under a ‘new model’ introduced in Circular 0013/2017 (DES, 2017a) is understood and mediated by teachers and principals in mainstream primary schools in a Dublin postal district.
An explanatory sequential design situated within a pragmatic paradigm was employed. In phase one principals, mainstream class teachers and SEN teachers (N=73) completed a survey, and in phase two one-to-one and focus group interviews were conducted in a Delivering Equality of Opportunity in Schools (DEIS) Band One Junior primary school in the same postal district. Analysis of the data sets were conducted using descriptive statistics and thematic analysis and the findings of the study are presented under four themes.
The data captured the attitudes, beliefs and perceptions of principals and teachers towards the ‘new model’ and its impact on their practice. The findings show that teachers and principals consider themselves advocates for inclusion but believe that all students cannot be included effectively in the mainstream class. They question the lack of clarity and transparency around the ‘complex’ needs’ component of the model. While some teachers and principals welcomed the increased agency provided under the ‘new model’, others suggested that this transferred the responsibility from the National Council for Special Education (NCSE) and the DE to schools without providing the necessary level of support which is a challenge. The findings of this study raise important considerations and have implications for policy, practice and future research if ‘truly inclusive schools’ are to be realised
More is not necessarily better: How different aspects of sensorimotor experience affect recognition memory for words.
No full textSemantic richness theory predicts that words with richer, more distinctive semantic representations should
facilitate performance in a word recognition memory task. We investigated the contribution of multiple
aspects of sensorimotor experience—those relating to the body, communication, food, and objects—to
word recognition memory, by analyzing megastudy data in a series of hierarchical linear regressions. We
found that different forms of sensorimotor experience produced different effects on memory. While stronger
grounding in object- and food-related experience facilitated word memory performance as expected for
semantic richness, experience relating to communication did not. Critically, sensorimotor experience relating to the body impaired rather than facilitated recognition memory by inflating false alarms, which was not
consistent with the idea that semantically richer representations are more memorable. Additionally, we found
that pure imageability (i.e., consciously generating mental imagery, distinct from sensorimotor experience)
contributes to semantic richness effects on word memory but with much smaller effect sizes than previously
reported, once sensorimotor grounding was taken into account. These results suggest that word recognition
memory is often but not consistently facilitated by rich semantic representations and that it is essential to
separately consider distinct forms of sensorimotor experience rather than assuming more information is
always better. The findings have implications for the use of semantic variables in memory research
The effects of sensorimotor and linguistic information on the basic-level advantage
No full textThe basic-level advantage is one of the best-known effects in human categorisation. Traditional accounts argue that basic-level categories present a maximally informative or entry level into a taxonomic organisation of concepts in semantic memory. However, these explanations are not fully compatible with most recent views on the structure of the conceptual system such as linguistic-simulation accounts, which emphasise the dual role of sensorimotor (i.e., perception-action experience of the world) and linguistic distributional information (i.e., statistical distribution of words in language) in conceptual processing. In four preregistered word→picture categorisation studies, we examined whether novel measures of sensorimotor and linguistic distance contribute to the basic level-advantage in categorical decision-making. Results showed that overlap in sensorimotor experience between category concept and member concept (e.g., animal→dog) predicted RT and accuracy at least as well as a traditional division into discrete subordinate, basic, and superordinate taxonomic levels. Furthermore, linguistic distributional information contributed to capturing effects of graded category structure where typicality ratings did not. Finally, when image label production frequency was taken into account (i.e., how often people actually produced specific labels for images), linguistic distributional information predicted RT and accuracy above and beyond sensorimotor information. These findings add to our understanding of how sensorimotor-linguistic theories of the conceptual system can explain categorisation behaviour