National University of Ireland, Maynooth
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Neural-Network-Based Distributed Generalized Nash Equilibrium Seeking for Uncertain Nonlinear Multiagent Systems
Get PDFThis article investigates distributed variational
generalized Nash equilibrium (v-GNE)-seeking problems in
heterogeneous high-order nonlinear multiagent systems
with partially unknown dynamics. To overcome the difficulties
brought by high-order uncertain physical dynamics,
we introduce a virtual decision with a primal–dual update
for each player and design reference-tracking schemes to
guide the players’ outputs toward the v-GNE. Besides, we
incorporate a shallow neural-network-based dynamic estimator
to handle the unknown nonlinear dynamics. Through
the Lyapunov analysis, we demonstrate that the players’
behaviors converge to the v-GNE with an arbitrarily small
error. Numerical simulations of connectivity control games
and energy consumption games illustrate the effectiveness
of our algorithm
Digital storytelling and Enterprise Education: A creative tool for presenting entrepreneurial ideas.
Get PDFThis paper explores the use of digital storytelling as a tool for presenting entrepreneurial ideas in enterprise education. Using quantitative and qualitative data, it examines student perceptions of the experience and its effectiveness. An online survey was distributed to 62 students in their first year of a teacher education degree, with responses gathered from 35 students. Findings suggest that digital storytelling effectively enables students to develop and present their entrepreneurial ideas and allows them to express themselves in interesting and engaging ways. The literature on digital storytelling is common in areas such as arts and media; however, few studies examine the use of digital storytelling in enterprise education. Fewer still examine digital storytelling as a means of assessment in an enterprise education module on a teacher education programme. This study provides insight into student experiences of digital storytelling as a tool to present entrepreneurial ideas and solutions to educational problems
Affording a world of possibilities: Children's agency in relational encounters through pedagogy in the outdoors.
Get PDFChildren’s playful experiences are considered a fundamental right and are justifiably receiving attention in global policy and practice. Although pedagogy in the outdoors in ECEC remains on the periphery of Irish policy, there is a growing recognition of children’s agentic affordances in the outdoors. In terms of quality provision, government focus on regulation, inspections and investment coincides with the attention paid to educator professional qualifications as a conduit to enhance relationships and well-being, and afford children’s learning and development.
There is a dearth of research on outdoor pedagogy in ECEC in Ireland that brings together the perspectives and experiences of educators, children and parents.1 This study addresses this gap by exploring their perspectives and experiences of where, why, how and with what they engage while in an ECEC outdoor environment. The following three questions aim to address this gap:
1. To what extent does the outdoor environment(s) inform and shape educators’ pedagogical approaches in preschool?
2. How does the outdoor environment(s) shape children’s experiences and pedagogical encounters in preschool?
3. What is the parents’ view of outdoor environments in preschool as an educational space?
Shaped by relational and affordance theories, a case study ethnographic approach was used to gather data from educators, children and parents over a nine-month period in a rural preschool. Data were gathered, drawing on the Mosaic approach, through art, child conferencing, conversations, walking tours, photography, photo elicitation, interview and focus groups, along with researcher photographs, observations, reflective diary and field notes.
Underpinned by a reflexive thematic analysis (RTA), I developed a framework of relational affordance pedagogy in the outdoors (RAPO) to guide the analysis. A space was created within which the interplay of educators’, children’s and parents’ definitions, narratives, beliefs, experiences, constraints and tensions of the outdoors was explored.
Findings indicate that relationships hold a central place in the pedagogical approach. For educators, affording possibilities in the outdoors emanates from relationship-based pedagogy, whereby children’s interests inform their engagement in outdoor environments. For children, their agentic possibilities are shaped by their opportunities to explore and co-construct their experiences with educators. Parents value their children’s independence, freedom and choice afforded by the outdoors, shaped by their relationships with educators and their trust in educators’ knowledge.
Children’s holistic learning and development in outdoor environments are influenced by dynamic and complex encounters at macro- (regulatory and policy) meso- and micro- (ECEC practice, outdoor environments, educators and parents) levels. Despite a consensus as to the value and importance of outdoor environments, this study identifies continuing tensions between policy and practice contexts.
This study argues that affordances in the outdoors positively impact on children’s agency and relational encounters. Once the pedagogical value of the outdoors is established, the affordances of the environment foster a reciprocity of well-being that extends to child-child, child-educator, child-parent and educator-parent relationships. The RAPO framework offers a new lens to discuss outdoor environments in ECEC as affording agentic relational pedagogical spaces. By placing the perspectives and experiences of educators, children and parents on relational outdoor pedagogy in ECEC in the public domain, my study makes an important contribution to empirical practice, knowledge, policy and regulatory development
Born to blossom, bloom, then perish? The rise and fall of the Pomells de Joventut de Catalunya (1920–1923)
Get PDFThe activities, outputs, and histories of youth organisations across a range of contexts can give us a privileged understanding of later political movements that find their roots with those youth movements. Scholars have already paid a great deal of attention to youth movements as part of totalitarian regimes, revolutionary and rebel-lious factions, as well as weird and wonderful cults. However, our understanding of the realities and impact of youth groups tied to minoritised language movements in Iberia remains under developed and fails to reflect on the agency of youth. In the case of Catalonia – the focus of this article – a number of youth groups emerged in the delicate, and politically fraught period between Spain’s disastrous defeat at hands of the United States in 1898and the sudden rise of the Primo de Rivera dictatorship (1923–1930). Nearing the end of this timeline, the Pomells de Joventut de Catalunya (1920–1923) were one such organisation that sprung upto serve both God and Catalonia, a combination which would garner interest from the Catalan elite but also single them out for annihilation at hands of Spanish nationalism. This article seeks to disclose the history of the Pomells, their wider networks and relations to the power structures of the day, how young people made the organisation their own through small actions, and, finally, the demise and afterlives of the organisation
Revised OSL chronology of the Kisiljevo loess-palaeosol sequence: New insight into the dust flux in the eastern Carpathian Basin during MIS 3 - MIS1
Get PDFThis study presents a detailed investigation of the Kisiljevo loess-palaeosol sequence in north-eastern Serbia, offering a refined understanding of its paleoenvironmental dynamics. Contrasting our updated OSL chronology with a previous study, reveals discrepancies, particularly at 400 cm depth, where a considerable age underestimation is evident. While variations in sampling depth and methodology may contribute to some differences, the substantial deviation raises concern about the reliability of the earlier chronology. Our robust age-depth model constructed using Bayesian modelling, and the consistent increase in ages with depth suggest a potential underestimation in the uppermost layer of the earlier study, possibly due to partial bleaching or post-depositional mixing. The Bayesian age-depth model portrays a continuous sedimentation history from the later stages of Marine Isotope Stage 3 (MIS 3) to the present day. The patterns in the calculated Mass Accumulation Rates reveal distinctive peaks during MIS 3 and the middle of MIS 2, deviating from typical dust deposition models. The MIS 3 peaks in dustiness could be attributed to regional factors such as increased transportation rates, enhanced trapping efficiency, or elevated palaeowind intensity. This research not only enhances our understanding of the Kisiljevo LPS but also provides valuable insights into regional paleoenvironmental dynamics. The study emphasizes the importance of considering local geological variations in reconstructing past climates from sediment archives and sets the stage for further investigations into the factors influencing dust deposition in north-eastern Serbia. The MAR trends established here serve as a crucial reference for broader paleoclimatic interpretations in the Carpathian Basin
HydroPredict: Ensemble River Flow Scenarios for Climate Change Adaptation
Get PDFHydroPredict aims to advance understanding of how climate change will affect river flows and drought events over the coming decades. Using the latest climate models and emissions storylines, the research assessed the impacts of climate change on flow conditions and droughts across 37 river catchments. Higher greenhouse gas emissions are associated with large reductions in average summer and annual low flows. For winter, increases in average flows are projected. If ambitious greenhouse gas reductions are achieved, more moderate reductions in summer and low flows are projected by the middle and end of the century. Changes in meteorological droughts in Ireland are driven by a transition to wetter winters and drier summers, together with increased evapotranspiration losses during summer and late spring months, leading to more frequent spring and summer droughts. The magnitude of future drought changes depends on future greenhouse gas emissions, with the most substantial changes found for higher emissions. Results arising from this project highlight the importance of temperature increases and larger evapotranspiration losses to future changes in droughts. The eastern and midland regions are expected to experience the greatest increases in drought magnitude, frequency and duration
Autobiographical Cerebral Network Activation in Older Adults Before and After Reminiscence Therapy: A Preliminary Report
Get PDFIntroduction: Reminiscence therapy (RT), which engages individuals to evoke positive memories, has been shown to be
effective in improving psychological well-being in older adults suffering from PTSD, depression, and anxiety. However, its impact
on brain function has yet to be determined. This paper presents functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data to describe
changes in autobiographical memory networks (AMN) in community-dwelling older adults. Methods: This pilot study used a
within-subject design to measure changes in AMN activation in 11 older adults who underwent 6 weeks of RT. In the scanner,
participants retrieved autobiographical memories which were either recent or remote, rehearsed or unrehearsed. Participants
also underwent a clinical interview to assess changes in memory, quality of life, mental health, and affect. Findings: Compared
to pretreatment, anxiety decreased (z = -2.014, p = .040) and activated significant areas within the AMN, including bilateral
medial prefrontal cortex, left precuneus, right occipital cortex, and left anterior hippocampus. Conclusion: Although RT had
subtle effects on psychological function in this sample with no evidence of impairments, including depression at baseline, the
fMRI data support current thinking of the effect RT has on the AMN. Increased activation of right posterior hippocampus
following RT is compatible with the Multiple Trace Theory Theory (Nadel & Moscovitch, 1997)
Multiscale spatially varying coefficient modelling using a Geographical Gaussian Process GAM
Get PDFThis paper proposes a novel spatially varying coefficient (SVC)
regression through a Geographical Gaussian Process GAM (GGP-GAM): a Generalized Additive Model (GAM) with Gaussian Process
(GP) splines parameterised at observation locations. A GGP-GAM
was applied to multiple simulated coefficient datasets exhibiting
varying degrees of spatial heterogeneity and out-performed the
SVC brand-leader, Multiscale Geographically Weighted Regression
(MGWR), under a range of fit metrics. Both were then applied to a
Brexit case study and compared, with MGWR marginally out-performing GGP-GAM. The theoretical frameworks and implementation
of both approaches are discussed: GWR models calibrate multiple
models whereas GAMs provide a full single model; GAMs can automatically penalise local collinearity; GWR-based approaches are
computationally more demanding; MGWR is still only for Gaussian
responses; MGWR bandwidths are intuitive indicators of spatial heterogeneity. GGP-GAM calibration and tuning are also discussed and
areas of future work are identified, including the creation of a
user-friendly package to support model creation and coefficient
mapping, and to facilitate ease of comparison with alternate SVC
models. A final observation that GGP-GAMs have the potential to
overcome some of the long-standing reservations about GWR-based regression methods and to elevate the perception of SVCs
amongst the broader community
Using the surface scattering mechanism from dual-pol SAR data to estimate topsoil particle-sizefractions
Get PDFData extracted from Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) have been widely employed to estimate soil properties.
However, these studies are typically constrained to bare soil conditions, as soil information retrieval in vegetated
areas remains challenging. Polarimetric decomposition has emerged as a potentially useful method to separate
the scattering contributions of different targets (e.g. canopy/leaves and the underlying soil), which is of significance for areas that are near-permanently covered in low-lying vegetation (e.g. grass) like Ireland – the study area for this investigation. Here, we test the surface scattering mechanism, derived from H-alpha dual-pol decomposition, together with other covariates, to estimate percentages of sand, silt, and clay, over vegetated terrain, using Sentinel 1 data (dual-pol C-band SAR). The statistical modelling approaches evaluated – linear
regression (LRM) and tree-based regression models (machine learning) – explicitly consider the compositional nature of soil texture. When compared to the models fitted without surface scattering data, results showed that the inclusion of the surface scattering data improved estimates of silt and clay, with the compositional linear regression model, and estimates of sand and silt fractions with different tree-based models. While not without limitations, our study demonstrated that the polarimetric decomposition method, which is typically used for classification and segmentation purposes, could also be used for soil property estimation, broadening the application of this technique in microwave remote sensing studies
Drought risk in Moldova under global warming and possible crop adaptation strategies
Get PDFThis study analyzes the relationship between drought processes and crop yields in Moldova, together with the effects of possible future climate change on crops. The severity of drought is analyzed over time in Moldova using the Standard Precipitation Index, the Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index, and their relationship with crop yields. In addition, rainfall variability and its relationship with crop yields are examined using spectral analysis and squared wavelet coherence. Observed station data (1950-2020 and 1850-2020), ERA5 reanalysis data (1950-2020), and climate model simulations (period 1970-2100) are used. Crop yield data (maize, sunflower, grape), data from experimental plots (wheat), and the Enhanced Vegetation Index from Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer satellites were also used. Results show that although the severity of meteorological droughts has decreased in the last 170 years, the impact of precipitation deficits on different crop yields has increased, concurrent with a sharp increase in temperature, which negatively affected crop yields. Annual crops are now more vulnerable to natural rainfall variability and, in years characterized by rainfall deficits, the possibility of reductions in crop yield increases due to sharp increases in temperature. Projections reveal a pessimistic outlook in the absence of adaptation, highlighting the urgency of developing new agricultural management strategies