National University of Ireland, Maynooth
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How are academic libraries in Ireland providing student well-being and mental health support?
Get PDFBackground
The mental health and well-being of students has been a global concern for some time. More recently, the COVID-19 pandemic has negatively impacted mental health and well-being. Increasing pressures on students such as the “cost of living crisis” and lack of suitable accommodation have led to increased levels of anxiety. Higher Education Institutions (HEI) are seeking ways to incorporate a “whole university” approach to tackle the perceived mental health crisis. Academic libraries are at the heart of campus life and are therefore in a unique position to provide mental health and well-being support to students.
Aims
Despite many initiatives taking place on the island of Ireland there is little in the extant literature providing evidence of this. The aim of this study is to provide an overview of the provision of mental health and well-being supports in Irish academic libraries, and drivers and barriers in doing so. In addition, this study investigates the impact that COVID-19 has had on service provision.
Method
A primarily quantitative approach was taken using a questionnaire adapted from a previous UK study. Academic librarians who were either library directors or had responsibility for student services in the library answered a series of multiple-choice questions, and two open text questions were provided for longer responses. Descriptive statistical analysis was performed on multiple-choice questions and thematic analysis applied to the open text comments
Domino Dancing: Mutuality of Obligation and Determining Employment Status in Ireland
Get PDFIt has taken a while, but what has been described as the first ‘gig economy’ case has been decided by the Irish Supreme Court. Although the case did not involve the use of a platform to organise work, it did require the Supreme Court to rule on the question of the employment status of pizza delivery drivers, all of whom were labelled as ‘independent contractors’ in the contracts between the company and the drivers. The case was taken by Revenue, which contended that the drivers, in fact, should have been classified as employees for tax purposes. The Supreme Court took the opportunity to present a long and detailed judgment on the correct approach to determining employment status, and, in particular, on the role of ‘mutuality of obligations’ in this consideration, with an extensive review of case law from the UK. This analysis discusses the case, with a particular emphasis on the view taken by the Court on mutuality of obligations in the context of ‘casual work’
The European Health Data Space as a Case Study
Get PDFIn May 2022, the European Commission proposed the launch of a health-specific data sharing framework called the European Health Data Space (EHDS), underpinned by legislation, for the use of electronic health data by patients and for research, innovation, policy-making, patient safety, statistics, or regulatory purposes. In this essay, I review some of its more contentious features based on the latest version of the legislative proposal. I suggest that the EHDS is a useful case study to illustrate the need for a translational bioethics approach that shines a critical analytical light on contentious aspects of large-scale research infrastructures
Purpose definition as a crucial step for determining the legal basis under the GDPR: implications for scientific research
Get PDFThe General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) of the European Union, which became applicable in 2018, contains a new accountability principle. Under this principle, controllers (ie parties determining the purposes and the means of the processing of personal data) are responsible for ensuring and demonstrating the overall compliance with the GDPR. However, interpretive uncertainties of the GDPR mean that controllers must exercise considerable judgement in designing and implementing an appropriate compliance strategy, making GDPR compliance both complex and resource-intensive. In this article, we provide conceptual clarity around GDPR compliance with respect to one core aspect of the law: the determination and relevance of the purpose of personal data processing. We derive from the GDPR’s text concrete requirements for purpose specification, which we subsequently apply to the area of secondary use of personal data for scientific research. We offer guidance for correctly specifying purposes of data processing under different research scenarios. To illustrate the practical necessity of purpose specification for GDPR compliance, we then show how our proposed approach can enable controllers to meet their compliance obligations, using the example of the overarching GDPR principle of lawfulness to highlight the relevance of purpose specification for the identification of a suitable legal basis
Legal bases for effective secondary use of health and genetic data in the EU: time for new legislative solutions to better harmonize data for cross-border sharing?
Get PDFKey points
The secondary use of health and genetic data between different actors and countries can be medically and scientifically rewarding, but it requires a solid legal framework to enable responsible cross-border and cross-sector access to such data.
From an EU data protection law standpoint, such secondary use requires a legal basis under Article 6(1) and a permission under Article 9(2) of the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). However, we argue that, in practice, a suitable legal basis is not always available to all stakeholders to process health and genetic data for secondary uses.
The EU has recently proposed a European Health Data Space (EHDS), which is the first common EU ‘data space’ in a specific area to emerge from the ‘European strategy for data’. Among other aims, the EHDS seeks to provide a consistent, trustworthy, and efficient system for reusing health and genetic data for research, innovation, policy-making, and regulatory activities (ie, secondary use). Yet, the EHDS does not account for the different phases in the data reuse lifecycle in a sufficiently encompassing manner, resulting in missing or insufficient GDPR legal bases for undertaking certain crucial processing operations.
As a result of the dependency on legislative acts and the varying nature of stakeholders involved, we find that there can be significant hurdles for secondary use, and some actors can even be excluded from participation entirely. Consequently, we advocate new data protection legislative solutions to harmonize data for cross-border sharing
PSO‐based optimal placement of electric vehicle charging stations in a distribution network in smart grid environment incorporating backward forward sweep method
Get PDFThe transition from conventional fossil‐fuel vehicles to electric vehicles (EVs) is critical for mitigating environmental pollution. The placement of electric vehicle charging stations (EVCS) significantly impacts the utility operator and electrical network. Inappropriately placed EVCS lead to challenges such as increased load, unbalanced generation, power losses, and reduced voltage stability. Incorporating distributed generation (DG) helps mitigate these issues by maximizing EV usage. This study focuses on optimizing EVCS and DG placement in radial distribution networks. The methodology employs a backward and forward sweep method for load flow analysis and utilizes the particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm to determine optimal EVCS and DG locations and sizes. This approach, validated on the IEEE‐33 bus system, outperforms existing methods. Results indicate a 2.5 times greater power loss reduction compared to simulated annealing (SA), 1.6 times better than artificial bee colony, and parity with genetic algorithm (GA). Overall, the PSO algorithm demonstrates superior optimization effectiveness and computational efficiency, showcasing 1–2.5 times better performance than other methodologies. Employing this approach yields significantly improved results, making it a promising technique for optimizing EVCS and DG placement in distribution networks
Foreign national prisoners, discrimination and race relations in Irish prisons
Get PDFRecent reports have highlighted the discriminatory treatment endured by foreign national prisoners (FNPs) in particular Irish prisons, but one key voice has been relatively absent from the discourse to date – the perspectives of the prisoners themselves. This article aims to complement these “top-down” perspectives with a comprehensive “bottom-up” analysis rooted in the experiences of 82 FNPs and explore the extent to which they were subject to racism, discrimination and differential treatment by prison staff and fellow inmates across eight Irish prisons. The article begins by outlining the methodology of the qualitative study. It then presents our findings in two parts. The first part focuses on FNPs’ personal views of their relationships with staff in Irish prisons. The second part explores the extent to which these FNPs interact with Irish prisoners and prisoners from other jurisdictions. The article reveals that forming relationships with staff and fellow inmates is challenging for certain FNPs due to racial prejudice, language barriers and segregation based on nationality
User-Generated Content Shapes Judicial Reasoning: Evidence from a Randomized Control Trial on Wikipedia
Get PDFLegal professionals have access to many different sources of knowledge, including user-generated Wikipedia articles that summarize previous judicial decisions (i.e., precedents). Although these Wikipedia articles are easily accessible, they have unknown provenance and reliability, and therefore using them in professional settings is problematic. Nevertheless, Wikipedia articles influence legal judgments, as we show using a first-of-its-kind randomized control trial on judicial decision making. We find that the presence of a Wikipedia article about Irish Supreme Court decisions makes it meaningfully more likely that the corresponding case will be cited as a precedent by judges in subsequent decisions. The language used in the Wikipedia article also influences the language used in judgments. These effects are only present for citations by the High Court and not for the higher levels of the judiciary (Court of Appeal and Supreme Court). The High Court faces larger caseloads, so this may indicate that settings with greater time pressures encourage greater reliance on Wikipedia. Our results add to the growing recognition that Wikipedia and other frequently accessed sources of user-generated content have profound effects on important social outcomes and that these effects extend farther than previously seen—into high-stakes settings where norms are supposed to restrict their use.
History: Rajiv Kohli, Senior Editor; Gordon Burtch, Associate Editor.
Funding: The authors thank the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Maynooth University for research funding.
Supplemental Material: The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/isre.2023.0034
Investigating the Elaborated Relational Abilities Index as a Novel Measure of Cognitive Ability
Get PDFThe need to reconceptualise intelligence in functional terms becomes apparent when reviewing traditional intelligence theories and testing methodologies. Relational Frame Theory offers a functional understanding of the intelligence concept by proposing a definition of it in terms of a well-understood behavioural process known as derived relational responding. While a growing number of researchers from different fields are coming to similar conclusions, what is needed to complement the Relational Frame Theory account is a functionally understood assessment of derived relational responding proficiency. The current thesis represents an in-depth experimental and psychometric analysis of the most recent version of the Relational Abilities Index (RAI; Cummins et al., 2023). Firstly, it was examined in terms of its convergence with a widely-used proxy measure of intelligence, in what was an entirely exploratory analysis rather than an effort to establish convergent validity. Both the full RAI and all its subscales significantly correlated with performance on Raven’s Standard Progressive Matrices. Moreover, the current thesis analysed the impact of four sociodemographic variables on RAI scores in order to quantify the assumed impact of environmental factors on relational responding proficiency. Of the variables examined, only parental education significantly predicted performance on the RAI, a finding that aligns with the literature on the importance of parental education levels on childhood cognitive functioning. Finally, the first-ever factor analysis of the RAI was conducted. The RAI’s current eight-factor model was found to be a poor fit, while better than the single-factor model. The implications of these findings for the further development of the RAI are discussed
Investigations into Esophageal Epithelial Basal Cell Differentiation: Fluorescent Reporters and Mechanosensing
No full textThe esophageal disease, Eosinophilic Esophagitis (EoE) is a chronic and allergic disease.
EoE is driven by food allergens which trigger Type 2 inflammation in the esophagus and causes
symptoms such as vomiting, stomach pain, and difficulty swallowing. Increasing in prevalence,
EoE poses a significant quality of life burden to patients. Left untreated, either due to diagnostic
delay or ineffective treatments, EoE patients can develop fibrosis of the esophagus (FS-EoE)
with worsening symptoms including food impaction and esophageal stricture. Histopathologic
manifestations of the disease include basal zone hyperplasia, which worsens the barrier function
of the epithelium. To date, there is no published research mechanistically linking fibrotic tissue
stiffening to hyperproliferation in EoE. We sought to explore the molecular mechanisms of this
hyperproliferation and fibrosis.
In order to map hyperproliferation, we sought to use KRT14 as a marker of
proliferative basal cells. To map epithelial cell differentiation, we sought to use KRT13 and
KRT4 as markers of differentiated suprabasal cells. Esophageal biopsy from control and EoE
patients were stained for basal and suprabasal cell markers, KRT14 and KRT13/KRT4,
respectively. Here we have confirmed that KRT14 and KRT4 can be used to map the basal
and suprabasal layers, respectively, in esophageal epithelium. In EoE epithelium, there is an
expansion of the basal (KRT14+) and early suprabasal (KRT14-
KRT13+KRT4-
) cell layers.
While KRT14 has been assessed in EoE tissue, here, we quantified KRT14+ basal expansion
on a protein level. Likewise, while sequencing has revealed increases in suprabasal cell markers,
here, we have quantified KRT13 and KRT4 on a protein level.
To understand epithelial cell differentiation in vitro, we confirmed that this stratification
pattern was recapitulated in submerged and 3D ALI model systems, with KRT14 expressed in
proliferative basal cells, and KRT4 expressed in differentiated, barrier-forming suprabasal cells.
The promoters for KRT14 and KRT4 were therefore used to successfully drive expression of
fluorescent proteins, DsRed and eGFP, respectively.
In order to understand the relationship between fibrosis and hyperproliferation in FS-EoE, the proliferation-associated and mechano-sensing transcriptional co-factor, Yes-associated protein (YAP) was assessed for its role in esophageal epithelial cells and EoE. While
YAP has been studied in muscle in EoE, here, for the first time, we investigate the role of YAP
in non-FS- and FS-EoE tissue and in esophageal epithelial cells. We have found that YAP-mediated transcription is increased in EoE and further increased in FS-EoE tissue. We have found that YAP protein not excluded from nuclear localization in EoE tissue. YAP is not
sequestered at cell-cell junctions, mirroring EoE-related barrier deficits. We found that in vitro,
YAP cellular location is responsive to cell density and ECM stiffness in esophageal epithelial
cells. Pharmacologic-induced nuclear YAP translocation, via XMU-MP-1 was seen to increase
migration of EPC2-hTERT cells, in an EMT-like manner in submerged cultures. In air-liquid
interface (ALI) cultures, pharmacologic upregulation of nuclear YAP is shown to decrease
barrier function in an EMT-like manner and enriched the suprabasal cell population.
Therefore, in EoE and FS-EoE, YAP signaling likely contributes to decreased barrier and
fibrosis through EMT and to basal zone hyperplasia through maintenance of the KRT13+ cell
population