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The continuous flow synthesis of azos
Get PDFAzo compounds find use in many areas of science, displaying crucial properties for important applications as photoconductive organic pigments, fluorescent quenchers, paints, cosmetics, inks, and in the large and valuable dye industry. Due to the unstable intermediates, and the exothermic and fast reactions used in their synthesis, high value azo compounds are excellent candidates for continuous flow manufacturing. This comprehensive review covers the progress made to date on developing continuous flow systems for azo synthesis and reflects on the main challenges still to be addressed, including scale up, conversion, product purity, and environmental impact. The further development of integrated continuous flow processes has the potential to help tackle these challenges and deliver improved methods for azo compound generation
Participatory action research in social movements
Get PDFThis chapter outlines why participatory action research (PAR) can be useful to social movements, and how to make it so. PAR involves movement activists carrying out research geared to their own needs, in a democratic process that transforms movement relationships and practice. The chapter is grounded in a 25-year experience of supporting activists carrying out PAR, and shows the wide range of different shapes it can take as activists reflect together on their own practice. It argues that this is far less risky than trial and error; focusses on the thing activists have most control over (their own actions); that its participatory and collective educational dimensions benefit movements politically; and that PAR supports movements becoming learning actors. Despite the diversity of actually-existing PAR, the chapter highlights some core principles that can be distilled from the experiences discussed to make PAR genuinely useful to movements
Social movements and hegemonic struggle
Get PDFAntonio Gramsci’s Southern Question and Lyons Theses, written just before his imprisonment by Mussolini, are fundamental resources for social movements seeking to resist the rise of the far right and to construct a different social order. Here, hegemony appears primarily in terms of broad social alliances, defining a particular form of capitalism under the leadership of a given ‘historical bloc’. The task for activists in this context is to find ways of disrupting these alliances and to construct new ones on a different basis, ‘from below and to the left’. The chapter draws on examples from Gramsci’s own race-and-class organizing practice and is illustrated with tools from activist training workshops
Security, Emotions and Radical Right Populism: Beyond a ‘Flaunting of the Low’?
Get PDFThe rise of exclusionary populism is widely regarded as one of the most significant phenomena in today’s political world. Despite this, the relationship between populism and security remains under-explored in the literature, including the affective power of populist security narratives. Against this background, this paper conducts a comparative analysis of radical right populist discourse in response to two recent shocking crimes in France and Ireland. The different expression given to security concerns in the two countries, such as a much less antagonistic ‘flaunting of the low’ in France, is suggestive of a more contingent and institutionally mediated relationship between security and populism than the existing literature would suggest
‘Childhood here was a fleeting thing’: A study of childhood, rurality and poverty in County Donegal, 1850-1950
No full textThis thesis considers what life was like for children growing up in the often ‘forgotten’ county
of Donegal during a century of intense demographic change from c. 1850 to 1950. Donegal
during this period showcased high fertility but low marriage rates, high death rates in some
categories, high migration and decreasing population size, all of which was typical of Ireland’s
unusual demographic profile. This thesis considers the way, if any, that this century of change
impacted or influenced the lives of children growing up in rural Ireland, through the Donegal
case study. This study is both a social history and a local history which focuses on the
experiences of children in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Ireland, which have, until recently,
been largely overlooked by historians. Donegal is situated on the north-western periphery of
Ireland, and these children essentially lived on the ‘outer edge’ of Irish life. This thesis adopts
a lifecycle approach, considering aspects of birth, life and death within childhood. The term
‘child’ has been understood historically, culturally and theoretically in different ways in the
modern age, but in this thesis childhood includes antenatal experience up to the age of sixteen.
As part of the lifecycle approach, this thesis utilises an intersectional analysis which considers
gender, religion and poverty, among other factors. The thesis begins with a discussion of
motherhood, pregnancy and birth, which are essential in any study of childhood, alongside
attitudes towards pregnancy and infancy. The next three chapters consider the daily lives of
children growing up in rural Ireland, by highlighting their experiences of education, labour and
leisure. Finally, childhood ill-health and death are analysed, bringing the childhood lifecycle to
an end. This thesis ultimately provides a rich social history of rural Irish childhoods by
highlighting both the idiosyncratic nature of childhood in County Donegal, a predominantly
rural county on the north-western seaboard of Ireland, and the experience of growing up in
rural Ireland more generally
Make me good…just not yet? The (potential) impact of the Adequate Minimum Wage Directive.
Get PDFThe Adequate Minimum Wage Directive has proven to be one of the most contentious pieces of EU labour legislation, with a variety of opinion on what impact the Directive may have, its significance, and its implications for labour relations regulation across the EU. This contribution focuses on the implications of the Directive for collective bargaining coverage in the EU, and takes a broadly optimistic view of what the impact of the Directive might be by using the example of Ireland as a case study. Ireland is one of the countries with a relatively low collective bargaining coverage rate, where measures will be required to promote collective bargaining. However, more broadly, the Irish journey in recent years seems to mirror that of the EU Institutions. From an emphasis on austerity measures and pressures to de-regulate following the financial crisis, allied with judicial decision-making which seemed to favour economic rights over social rights, to a “paradigm shift” of a (re)emphasis on social Europe, and on collective rights. The paper looks at the impact the Directive (pre-transposition) has already had in terms of social dialogue and collective bargaining, before turning to consider some of the transposition challenges. In the concluding section, the paper reflects on some lessons that might be of wider application across the Member States
Selection of patient-reported outcome measures in pulmonary arterial hypertension clinical trials: a systematic review, meta-analysis and health-related quality of life framework
Get PDFHealth-related quality of life (HRQoL) in pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) is valued
as an outcome measure by patients, clinicians and regulators. The selection of patient-reported outcome
measures (PROMs) for measurement of HRQoL in PAH clinical trials lacks systematic evaluation of their
suitability, accuracy and reliability.
Methods We report a systematic review (PROSPERO ID: CRD42024484021) following Preferred Reporting
Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines of PROMs selected in PAH clinical
trials. PROM measurement properties were then evaluated according to the 10-step COnsensus-based Standards
for the selection of health Measurement INstruments (COSMIN) checklist and graded by recommendation for
use. Finally, HRQoL was modelled into a conceptual framework using patient interviews and surveys.
Results Screening of 896 records identified 90 randomised controlled trials. 43 trials selected PROMs, of
which 20 were sufficiently validated to detect meaningful change. Of these, eight trials were adequately
powered, using either EuroQol-five dimensions-five levels (EQ-5D-5L), Short-Form-36 (SF-36) or the
Living with Pulmonary Hypertension Questionnaire (LPHQ). The COSMIN evaluation recommended
EmPHasis-10 and the LPHQ for use (grade A); whereas, SF-36 and EQ-5D-5L require further study
(grade B). A conceptual framework of HRQoL was developed from literature comprising 8045 patients.
This framework can be used to visualise the different HRQoL concepts measured by different PROMs.
Conclusion To improve patient-centred research, greater consistency in PROM selection is required. Three
of 90 randomised controlled trials have selected COSMIN-recommended PROMs. Whilst the PROMs
evaluated require development across the 10 areas of psychometric property measurement, EmPHasis-10
and the LPHQ can be recommended for use. The ratified conceptual framework can further support PROM
selection by identifying the HRQoL concepts they are likely to capture
Examining Overshadowing and Blocking in Human Spatial Learning using a Virtual Water Maze
Get PDFSpatial navigation and learning have been previously investigated in animal and human studies with two major theories dominating the literature, associative learning theory (Pearce, 2009) and cognitive mapping theory (O Keefe & Nadel, 1978). Cue competition is a key feature of associative learning theory. Overshadowing and blocking are two cue competition effects which have featured in previous animal and human studies. The role of landmarks has been examined in animal studies using the Morris water maze (Morris, 1984). This task requires animals to navigate around a circular pool of water and locate a hidden platform. Animals use cues in the environment to learn the hidden platform's location over a series of trials. NavWell (Commins et al., 2020) is a virtual Morris Water Maze task developed by the Commins Lab to study human spatial behaviour and learning. This thesis examined overshadowing and blocking in healthy young human participants using NavWell. In experiment 1 (overshadowing), landmarks positioned near the goal controlled searching behaviour more than the distal landmarks demonstrating an overshadowing effect. Additionally, distal landmarks appeared to have been ignored suggesting that participants use a strategy requiring the least effort when learning. In experiment 2 (blocking), a single landmark learned in phase 1 did not interfere with learning of a novel landmark introduced in phase 2 and as such, a blocking effect did not occur. As cues were equidistant and proximity was not a factor, all cues were treated equally by participants and integrated into a cognitive map. Evidence for an associative account of learning (experiment 1), support for a cognitive mapping-based approach to learning (experiment 2) and the influence of proximal cues were discussed
Inside Out: The Short Stories of Micheál Ó Conghaile
Get PDFIn “Trasnú” (Crossing), Gaeltacht poet Cathal Ó Searcaigh revels
in the creative tension inherent in the comingling of traditional Irishlanguage culture with late modernity. He describes contemporary
identity as a messy hybrid of ancient and tenacious tradition on the one
hand and a freeing but fickle globalized culture on the other: “tá muid
leath-réamhstairiúil / agus leath-postmodern intertextual” (we are half
prehistoric, half postmodern intertextual).1
Few authors exemplify
this dual identity better than the Gaeltacht novelist, short-story writer,
and playwright Micheál Ó Conghaile. Born in 1962, Ó Conghaile
is by no means an old man, yet the upbringing that he describes is
now totally unthinkable. While Ireland entered the “Lemass era” of
economic change—often considered to have catalyzed radical social
transformation over the following decades—Ó Conghaile spent his
youth in one of the most dramatically isolated, and consequently culturally stable, parts of the country. Now an acclaimed author with a
secure place in the Irish-language canon, Ó Conghaile—who went
on to found one of the language’s most important publishers, Cló
Iar-Chonnacht—grew up reading by candlelight. His hybrid identity
as a rural gay man, a native Irish-speaker, and an educated and welltraveled entrepreneur provides him with a unique and complicated
perspective that seems to accommodate both the authority of one on
the inside and the marginalization of one inherently different. Difference is accepted as a fact of life in his work, which ranges from realistic
testimony to the wildly experimental and obscene
Minorities at War, Part 1: State Policies in Times of Conflict
Get PDFThis short introduction provides an overview for the first part of the special issue of ‘Minorities at War’. The issue’s overarching theme explores how periods of conflict influenced the relationship between minority groups in Central and Eastern Europe and their respective host states during the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. The articles featured are based on contributions originally presented at the BASEES Study Group for Minority History’s second official biennial symposium, ‘Minorities at War from Napoleon to Putin’, which was held at the New Europe College in Bucharest, Romania from 11-12 May 2023