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Closing The Loop: A Life Cycle Assessment of Integrated Organic Feed and Egg Production In Brazil
No full textAgriculture, including egg production, is a major contributor to environmental challenges, impacting freshwater resources, nutrient cycles, and biodiversity. As the global demand for food security rises, there is an urgent need for sustainable practices. Egg production, while nutritionally valuable, faces scrutiny for its environmental impacts. Organic egg production presents a promising, sustainable alternative. However, critical knowledge gaps persist regarding its environmental performance and the potential for circular bioeconomy practices to enhance sustainability.This thesis addresses these gaps by examining the environmental impacts of integrated organic feed and egg production in Brazil, focusing on two large-scale farms with productivity levels comparable to conventional systems. The study aims to accurately quantify these impacts, assess the environmental benefits of organic practices, and explore strategies for improving sustainability through circular bioeconomy approaches, such as by-product reuse and vaporisation. By generating high-quality primary data, the research improves Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) models, which often rely on less precise secondary data from conventional systems. Using a comprehensive LCA approach, it evaluates all production stages, from feed cultivation to egg packaging, and validates methodologies for assessing ecosystem services and soil biodiversity impacts, providing a holistic perspective on the environmental performance of organic systems. The findings reveal that organic agriculture can achieve productivity levels comparable to conventional systems while delivering clear environmental benefits across multiple impact categories, such as climate change, eutrophication, and resource depletion. Practices like crop rotation, biological pest control, and reduced reliance on synthetic fertilisers were pivotal in lowering environmental impacts. The study also highlights the sustainability benefits of recycling organic residues, particularly through composting and utilising poultry litter, fostering a closed-loop system that further reduces environmental burdens. LCA model validation demonstrated its utility in predicting certain soil quality indicators, such as soil organic carbon, soil compaction, biodiversity, and erosion potential, which are crucial for assessing soil health. However, discrepancies between model predictions and field observations for indicators like infiltration reduction potential underscore the need for methodological refinements. Incorporating site-specific data, such as soil compaction and sealing factors, and developing characterisation factors for local and regional contexts are necessary to enhance the accuracy and applicability of LCA assessments. The study concludes that integrated and circular organic farming systems hold significant potential for achieving high productivity while minimising environmental impacts. Refining LCA methodologies to capture the complexities of organic systems and tailoring them to regional conditions, particularly in Brazil, is essential. The research also underscores the importance of expanding efforts in data collection, harmonising methodologies, and integrating advanced technologies to optimise organic systems and promote their broader adoption.This thesis challenges prevailing misconceptions about organic farming, presenting compelling evidence of its potential to address food security and environmental sustainability
A Grounded Theory on Constructing Relationships In Midwifery-led Units
No full textIntroduction: Community midwifery postnatal services are not routinely practised in Ireland. The public health nurse provides one visit following birth, which is the norm in the established consultant-led model. Two midwifery-led units in Ireland provide a family-centred model of maternity care including a postnatal community midwifery service. This is the first study to investigate the provision of a postnatal community midwifery service as part of a midwifery-led philosophy of care. The study was justified as no studies exist to examine midwifery led postnatal care from an Irish perspective, even though this service has been operating since 2004. The National Maternity Strategy (DOH, 2016) has set out recommendations that support the development of community midwifery models of care, which incorporate postnatal services. Objective: To explore midwives’ perceptions and experiences of providing a postnatal midwifery service in a community setting following birth in a midwifery-led unit in Ireland. It is hoped that valuable lessons may be learned from midwives’ experiences and stories. Methodology: A Glaserian grounded theory design was employed to address the research objective. Nineteen purposively sampled midwives working in two midwifery-led community services were interviewed. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews theoretical sampling and memoing and analysed using constant comparative analysis. Data collection was undertaken during the Coronavirus pandemic (Feb 2020-Jan 2022) and the HSE cyber-attack (May 2021-Sept 2021). Findings: The indings identified a substantive grounded theory of ‘A place for you and us,’ a core category consisting of three sub-core categories which emerged to support the substantive theory. Sub-core categories identified were visualising midwifery-led philosophies, directioning; solution building for modern midwifery challenges and evolving; future community midwifery services. These findings may guide the provision of community maternity services in Ireland as advocated by the Maternity Strategy (DOH, 2016) as unique features from midwifery perspectives and maternity services are revealed. Conclusions: Findings from this study indicate that the advantages of woman centred models of care are relevant only if these models are available for midwives to experience. The importance of trusting and respecting midwifery expertise by others enabled conflicts and solution building through meaningful collaborative and collegial working to be resolved. Foundations were strengthened when cohesive woman centred management coincided with respectful, equity driven partnerships with MDTs working in primary and hospital jurisdictions. Building relationships and effective inter-relational working strategies sustained, strengthened and evolved community services through enhanced collaboration within maternity disciplines and shared ownership and investment in community services. Implications for practice: Women centred evidence based models and knowledge while widely available can only become relevant and valuable once midwives are exposed and have opportunities to relate and identify with them. Despite policy recommending the expansion of postnatal services, there remains a paucity of empirical evidence and experiences of postnatal perspectives from community midwives. There is a need to report on Irish community services, and identify policy and guideline recommendations to address gaps in current empirical research.2025-11-07 JG: Author's signature removed from PD
Loreto Education and the Leadership of Mother Michael Corcoran (1888-1918) : Challenge and Change
No full textThis thesis provides an examination and analysis of the modernisation of Loreto education under the leadership of the Superior General, Mother Michael Corcoran from 1888 to 1918. As a member of the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary (IBVM), her vision for Loreto education was inspired by contemporary ideas of open access to education for women and innovative curricular development. During her period in office, significant educational and financial resources were directed towards providing improved educational facilities for girls in Loreto schools, particularly at higher level. Mother Michael’s leadership responded to changes in the agency of women religious at the turn of the century, in moving away from a life of enclosure. New Irish education policies in the second half of the nineteenth century, could only be facilitated by relaxing some convent rules, including a greater acceptance of working lives beyond the cloister. Mother Michael understood the growing need for change in managing educational provision in convent schools. Through her introduction of new models of leadership and learning, she embraced collaboration with other educational partners. Findings illustrate how she exercised her leadership indirectly and sometimes covertly, to achieve her educational goals. These goals threatened the authority of the Catholic bishops in Ireland, who considered themselves the gate-keepers of Catholic education. Her struggle to unify global Loreto education under central governance from Ireland was further resisted within her own institution. This thesis identifies her as one of the most significant educators of Catholic women at the turn of the twentieth century
Distributed energy resource management considering limited distribution network monitoring
No full textThe evidence of climate change and the associated agreements on carbon emission reduction targets are motivating an increasing number of distributed energy resources (DER) to be installed in the distribution network. This is likely to cause violations of system constraints in the distribution network. Furthermore, limited monitoring in the distribution network leads to uncertainty, in turn increasing this risk. However, the flexibility introduced by DER could support the distribution network. DER aggregators (DERAs) have been proposed to manage multiple small-scale DER. Significant research has been conducted on the impact of DER and the methods to manage them, but less has been published regarding uncertainty handling in real time considering the limited data available to a DERA in a realistic network. To address these limitations, methods are proposed that can be used to achieve DER management by a third-party DERA considering the uncertainty in the distribution network. The impact of DER will be evaluated in a shared parking facility distribution network using the University College Dublin distribution network as a test network. As electric vehicles gain popularity in Ireland, it is a good example of DER that, if left unmanaged, could cause significant concerns in the distribution network. Motivated by the fact that the distribution network will likely become congested with the increase in DER, the flexibility available due to DER in a distribution network is considered. The proposed method considers uncertainty while including all available data. A probabilistic model is developed that includes historical data and any available measurements in order to define a feasible region in which any changes to the DER output respect system operating constraints. This creates a more precise model that more accurately matches the state of the network and reduces the uncertainty. In order to manage DER in real time, it is imperative that a DERA know the impact of changing DER output prior to dispatch. A method is proposed that estimates the voltages at the points of connection of DER based on a desired change in DER active power generation in real time. This allows DERAs to mitigate the risk of violating system constraints while managing DER. This method relies only on information reasonably available to a DERA. No knowledge of the network is required. The method uses a fully connected feedforward neural network to estimate the voltages at the points of DER connections after desired changes in each DER active power generation. The proposed method is validated for both single-phase and three-phase voltage estimations and shows superior performance compared to a voltage sensitivity approach
An analysis of the healthfulness of the Irish retail food environment and the potential for reformulation to provide healthier options
No full textDiet-related noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) are a leading cause of death globally, in Europe and in Ireland. The underlying causes of diet-related NCDs are varied and complex, with an important variable being the food environment. In high income countries, supermarkets are an increasingly influential actor in the food environment and there is limited evidence on the healthfulness of the supermarket food environment in Ireland. To address this evidence gap, several cross-sectional studies were completed to benchmark the healthfulness of the supermarket food environment in urban Ireland, by area-level deprivation. A scoping review was completed to identify food reformulation trends in prepacked food. A number of cross-sectional studies were completed including 1) an investigation into the reliability of food labels for monitoring prepacked food nutrient composition, 2) a review of changes in the nutrient composition of prepacked foods contributing to dietary sugar intakes, and 3) an investigation into the density of supermarkets and an examination of the healthfulness of their in-store food environment by area-level deprivation, in County Dublin, Ireland. The thesis findings show, food labels are, for the most part, a reliable source of information for food reformulation monitoring in both branded and own brand foods. The thesis also identified progress in reducing sugar in five of six food categories investigated using matched product pair analysis. With regards to the supermarket community food environment, there was a non-significant trend for supermarkets to be located in areas of lower deprivation. When considering the healthfulness of the supermarket consumer food environment, for every 100 cm2 of shelf space measured, 68.0 cm2 (SD 10.6) was allocated to unhealthy food and 98.5% (SD 6.1) of high prominence shelf space measured was allocated to unhealthy foods, with no statistically significant difference by area-level deprivation. The thesis findings indicate that despite some progress in food reformulation, overall, the supermarket food environment does not make the healthy choice the easy choice. There is a need to improve the nutrient quality of foods, whilst also increasing the availability of fresh, minimally processed and healthy foods and reducing the availability and prominence of high fat, sugar, salt foods in the supermarket consumer food environment
Optimizing Workflow Scheduling for High-Performance Computing
No full textHigh-Performance Computing has evolved into a large-scale system that providesubiquitousaccessto asharedpoolofresourcesfor BigDatatasks such as workflow applications. However, processing of workflow applications generates large numbers of tasks and huge amounts of data, making them very expensive and energy-consuming. In addition, workflow scheduling in the HPC environment must handle multiple-objectives optimization and scheduling dynamicity. Currently, there are several approaches for scheduling workflow applications, but these approaches have difficulties in (i) generating efficient schedules on diverse HPC resources, (ii) managing the dynamicity of resources and workflow applications in the HPC to fully exploit parallelism, and (iii) selecting the best computational resources to execute each workflow task. This is because most of these approaches are highly dependent on job priority without considering the capacity of processing nodes relative to the size of workflow tasks. This thesis addresses the workflow scheduling optimization problem in three ways: It has been shown how challenging it is to schedule large tasks on HPC resources, and presented a novel mono-objective optimization heuristic to find a higher number of solutions that can optimize the execution cost of scientific workflows to meet user requirements and improve the quality of services of HPC systems. Iproposedabi-objectiveschemethataddressesaprocessingnodeselection problem for workflow scheduling. This scheme considers both large and small workflow tasks and introduces a technique to split the large workflow tasks into subtasks to reduce their execution time so that all tasks can meet their deadlines at a lower cost and in a shorter time. Finally, I proposed a technique to the workflow scheduling dynamicity problem that reduces the three main, but conflicting scheduling objectives: energy consumption, makespan, and execution cost
Application of a LED-UV based light technology for decontamination of chicken breast fillets: Impact on microbiota and quality attributes
No full textLight-emitting diode (LED) technologies are economical and efficient devices that could be considered in poultry processing as disinfection strategies. This study evaluated the efficacy of a LED-based device to reduce the microbial load on chicken meat and investigated it's impact on selected quality parameters. Quality parameters including pH, texture and color after LED-UV exposure and during subsequent storage for 7 days at 4 ̊C were investigated. Diced chicken breast fillets were exposed to UV light wavelengths of 255, 280, 300 and 365 nm for 2, 4, 6, 8 and 10 min. A microbiological analysis was conducted on chicken samples to enumerate bacterial counts. Reductions between 1.17 and 1.67 log CFU/g for total viable counts of mesophilic, psychrophilic bacteria and total Enterobacteriaceae counts were observed, whereas, up to 2 log CFU/g was obtained for Pseudomonas and lactic acid bacteria groups after treatment with wavelengths of 280, 300 and 365 nm. Furthermore, color, texture and pH were not affected by exposure to UV light at 280 nm even following 7 days storage. Thus, LED-based technologies could be applied on poultry meat to reduce the levels of spoilage bacteria while maintaining quality attributes.Department of Agriculture, Food and the MarineTeagas
The potential of IVR for family therapy training: State of the art and future directions
No full textRole plays and live supervision have long been core methods in family therapy education, offering trainees experiential opportunities to practice therapeutic techniques, engage in reflexivity, and develop systemic awareness. However, these traditional methods face limitations in scalability, standardization, and emotional safety. Immersive Virtual Reality (IVR)—a technology capable of eliciting realistic affective and cognitive responses through a sense of presence—presents new possibilities for addressing these challenges. Drawing upon research in simulation-based learning, this article explores how IVR can enhance the acquisition of core family therapy competencies, including technical skills, reflexivity, empathy, and context sensitivity. The paper synthesizes evidence from existing family therapy education models and methods and IVR-based training research. It highlights the unique pedagogical affordances of IVR—embodied perspective-taking, emotional safety, standardization, and repeatability—and links these to family therapy training goals. An IVR prototype developed by the authors simulates a first family therapy session, providing a proof of concept for integrating virtual simulations into therapist education. Preliminary feedback from professionals indicates that IVR can foster engagement and self-reflexivity, though challenges remain regarding content realism, cost, and trainers’ digital skills. The article concludes by identifying future directions for research and practice, emphasizing the need for interdisciplinary collaboration, empirical validation, and ethical frameworks to guide the responsible implementation of IVR in family therapy education.Check pub. date and citation details on check dat
Platelets and circulating extracellular vesicles in cancer therapy and thrombosis
No full textPlatelets are known for their role in haemostasis and thrombosis but are also key mediators of vascular communication. Tumour cells exploit platelet signalling to support survival, growth, immune evasion and metastasis. This process, termed Tumour Cell-Induced Platelet Activation (TCIPA), involves platelet receptor engagement, release of activation mediators, endothelial dysregulation, and coagulation cascade activation, creating a tightly interwoven relationship between platelets and cancer cells that elevates the prothrombotic potential of cancer patients. Activated platelets release extracellular vesicles (EVs) that influence cellular processes via endocytosis. Platelet-derived EVs enhance thrombotic and coagulant capacity, while tumour-derived EVs promote thrombosis and metastasis, acting synergistically in circulation. This interplay underpins fatal thrombotic events in cancer, highlighting the need to investigate platelet and EV roles in cancer therapies. This thesis focuses on two distinct but interrelated cancer therapies, investigating the platelets and EVs contributions to both mechanisms of action. The first aim evaluated EV and inflammatory profiles in active cancer patients presenting with venous thromboembolism (VTE) to the Mater Misericordiae University Hospital (MMUH). These patients were treated with the historic, Low Molecular Weight Heparin (LMWH) or the newly emerging drug group, Direct Oral Anticoagulants (DOACs). An embedded Quality Improvement (QI) Study successfully increased patient recruitment by implementing a clinical project sponsor, increasing interdisciplinary communication and efficient process monitoring. Characterisation of EVs using Nanoparticle Tracking Analysis (NTA), flow cytometry, and mass spectrometry revealed a non-significant trend of lower total and tissue factor-expressing EVs in DOAC-treated patients compared to LMWH. A similar numeric trend was observed in cytokine profiles, suggesting potential anti-inflammatory effects of DOACs. Although limited by sample size, these findings align with existing clinical data supporting the shift to DOACs for CAT treatment, highlighting the need for larger studies to confirm these promising observations. The second aim investigated the role of platelets and EVs in a leukapheresis treatment for Cutaneous T Cell Lymphoma, called Extracorporeal Photopheresis (ECP). In this procedure, leukocytes and platelets are extracted, exposed to UVA light and 8-methoxypsoralen, and reinfused into the patient. While ECP induces immunomodulation, 27% of patients show no clinical response, with the role of platelets in this process previously unknown. An ex vivo and in vitro study using NTA, flow cytometry, immunoassays, and platelet aggregometry revealed that platelet activation occurs the during density flow centrifugation step but not during UVA light/8-methoxypsoralen exposure. Contrary to previous assumptions, the irradiation step did not influence platelet activation, aggregation, or EV release. These results identify density flow centrifugation as the critical point for platelet activation, providing novel insights into ECP mechanisms. In summary, this comprehensive body of research highlights the subtle but successful initiatives to increase recruitment rates, uncovered intriguing trends indicating DOACs reduce tissue factor EVs and circulating cytokine levels compared to LMWH treatment of cancer associated thrombosis, potentially depicting anti-inflammatory pleotropic effects and begins to clarify the role of platelets in the ECP process, emphasizing the density flow centrifugation step as the critical point for platelet activation. These insights elucidate the diverse roles of platelets and EVs in immuno-thrombotic contributions to cancer therapies, revealing exciting avenues for future research and discovery
A general Wolff theorem for arbitrary Banach spaces
No full textThe Kobayashi distance is used to generalise the classical theorem of Wolff to compact holomorphic fixed point free mappings on the open unit ball of an arbitrary complex Banach space E and more generally on bounded convex domains in E, thereby extending results of Abate for Cn. This is compared to earlier results on bounded symmetric domains. The boundary behaviour of the Kobayashi distance κ on bounded symmetric domains is also discussed, with estimates given for κ(z, w) as one or both of z, w tend to the boundary