558 research outputs found
Sort by
Forging the Dance: The Expression of Regionality in Irish Folk Theatre
Get PDFSiamsa Tíre, The National Folk Theatre of Ireland, operates as a regional theatre company that develops performances through traditional music, song and dance rather than spoken word. From early productions in a local convent hall in the 1950s, performances are now staged in a purpose-built theatre in the town of Tralee, Co. Kerry, the design of which is modelled on an ancient stone structure in the region. Importantly they also established two rural centres in the 1970s which facilitated training and smaller performance opportunities for members of the cast and their importance to some members of the community as a connection with a rural heritage and the development of the company remains. Although the company has performed nationally and internationally throughout its history, its connection to place is reinforced through both physical spaces and the incorporation of local music, and more particularly, dance styles.
In addition to the location of the company in Co. Kerry, the representation of regional themes on stage is an integral part of the Siamsa Tíre productions. The original production, Siamsa or Fadó Fadó is based on the life experiences of some of the early cast but many aspects of custom and musical repertoire are recognisable beyond the region. Ding Ding Dederó (1991), Tearmann (2006) and Moriarty (2009) focused on local figures - John Moriarty was a local philosopher and the principal character in Tearmann is based on a local dancing master. Ding Dong Dederó is perhaps the most complex of the productions in terms of understanding a regional stage identity as it both represents the life of North Kerry dancing master and blacksmith Jeremiah Molyneaux, whose dancing style is integral to the company's performances and raison d’etre, and develops contemporary dance forms that involve and evolve that dance style.
This paper critically considers the relationship between the physical location of Siamsa Tíre and its role as a regional, national and international theatre company, focusing on how selected productions construct and reflect a regional identity and reflect the process of glocalisation and respond to changes in the arts and society. Furthermore, it acknowledges the importance of the company to the local tourist industry and the potential role of tourism in influencing the performance of music and dance
Designing and Evaluating Digital Mindfulness-based Interventions for Older Informal Carers
Get PDFAcross the world a change in demographics is occurring, with the average age of populations increasing alongside longer life expectancy. Increases in demand for health care alongside fewer staff and resources available are resulting in policy shifts towards ageing in place. The number of older informal carers, often caring for an older family member or friend, will therefore continue to grow. A significant issue facing this cohort is stress, which can negatively affect other areas of health wellbeing such as sleep quality, physical health and psychological wellbeing. Mobile technologies delivering interventions offer an important alternative to traditional, face-to-face support which may not be accessible for those unable to leave a care recipient unattended for significant periods of time, or for those living in rural areas. Moreover, mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs) have been used to increase awareness and support coping strategies by providing carers with tools to manage their emotional and physical health and wellbeing.
This thesis investigates the problem of chronic stress among older informal carers of persons with dementia and its negative impact on health and wellbeing, as well as the potential for mindfulness training, education, feedback and health self-management to address this phenomenon. The study focussed on the design and delivery of a digital application, Mind Yourself, delivering an MBI to manage stress alongside blood pressure, activity and sleep management through tracking, data visualizations and educational advice. An eight-week home-based trial was conducted to evaluate experiences and usage of the application with eight older informal carers of persons with dementia.
The work presented extends current research by focussing on the user-centred design of a digital mindfulness-based intervention specifically for older informal carers of persons with dementia. The study demonstrates that a viable and potentially effective means to support stress management is through the integration of a digital MBI into a digital health and wellbeing application. Findings from the trial suggest that this approach and design is acceptable, feasible, usable and engaging for older informal carers. Results from both the trial and the study overall would suggest that further research in the area of digital MBIs and connected health for older informal carers is warranted. Reaching this cohort and providing them with the tools and strategies to more effectively look after health and wellbeing could result in both the carer and care recipient remaining at home for as long as possible
Expert review of Taxonomy based testing – a testing framework for medical device software
Get PDFThis paper details the expert review of a framework developed to implement a novel testing approach called taxonomy-based testing (TBT) for the medical device software domain. This framework proposes three approaches to implement TBT and has been validated by experts from the software testing industry and the medical device software domain. This paper details the results from the expert review. The expert review focused on validating the three approaches to TBT, the benefits of TBT to medical device software development, the accuracy of mappings of testing techniques from ISTQB and ISO/IEC/IEEE 29119-4:2015 to defects from a defect taxonomy, the integration of TBT into the standard test processes, ISTQB and ISO/IEC/IEEE 29119-2:2013 and the structure of the framework. The contribution of this paper is to reveal that (i) the framework is implementable in medical device software organisations that follow the IEC 62304:2006+A1:2015 software development process or that use standard test processes, (ii) using a defect taxonomy could standardise the application of experience-based approaches to software testing and (iii) considering potential defects before writing test cases could identify additional defects for test cases
Resolving the organic carbon budget of a humic, oligotrophic lake in the west of Ireland
Get PDFWaters draining peatland catchments are generally coloured due to high levels of dissolved and particulate organic carbon (DOC and POC). This flux represents a key link between soil and ocean carbon pools and fuels the aquatic food-web. Knowledge about these carbon fluxes is crucial to broaden our understanding of global C cycling. In three interconnected studies, the dynamics of aquatic carbon cycling were explored in the Burrishoole catchment (Ireland) and its main lake, Lough Feeagh. In the first study, changes in river water colour (a DOC proxy) were analysed in three streams feeding Lough Feeagh. Statistical analysis revealed that three variables, soil temperature, soil moisture deficit, and the North Atlantic Oscillation, explained 66% of colour variance. In the second study, high-frequency measurements of CO2, in the surface waters of Lough Feeagh, were examined along with a set of environmental variables. CO2 concentrations ranged between 491 and 1169 µatm, and the lake was a constant source of CO2 to the atmosphere. Statistical analysis revealed that inflow DOC concentration explained 68% of the CO2 variability. An organic carbon (OC) budget for Lough Feeagh during 2017 was estimated in the third study. The total OC load to the lake was 2544 t C (equivalent to 817 g m2 yr-1 of lake area), of which 51% was transported as DOC, and 41% as POC, 4% in ground water, 3% as net ecosystem production, and 1% in rainwater. The total OC fate was estimated to be 2689 t C (equivalent to 864 g m2 yr-1 of lake area) of which 49% and 12% were exported as DOC and POC respectively, 28% was deposited as sediment and 11% was emitted as CO2 to the atmosphere. These studies provided an improved understanding of the quantity of OC in flux and insights into the mechanisms driving these fluxe
“Classifying Operations”: Constructing and manufacturing identities in Irish and American country music
Get PDFA musician’s image is critical to their success (Whitely, 1997, 2013; North and Hargreaves, 1999; Machin, 2010). As well as the sound of the music, image creates a connection with their audience, particularly since the advent of MTV and the music video (Banks, 1997; Frith, Goodwin and Grossberg, 2005; Lieb, 2013). Irish and American performers of country music utilise elements of social and cultural markers to create an identity for themselves. Influenced by the work of sociologist Pierre Bourdieu (1990) and its application in the study of country music (Hubbs, 2014), this article provides a comparison between American country singer Gretchen Wilson and Irish country singer Mags McCarthy
Lake heatwaves under climate change
No full textLake ecosystems, and the organisms that live within them, are vulnerable to temperature change, including the increased occurrence of thermal extremes. However, very little is known about lake heatwaves—periods of extreme warm lake surface water temperature—and how they may change under global warming. Here we use satellite observations and a numerical model to investigate changes in lake heatwaves for hundreds of lakes worldwide from 1901 to 2099. We show that lake heatwaves will become hotter and longer by the end of the twenty-first century. For the high-greenhouse-gas-emission scenario (Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) 8.5), the average intensity of lake heatwaves, defined relative to the historical period (1970 to 1999), will increase from 3.7 ± 0.1 to 5.4 ± 0.8 degrees Celsius and their average duration will increase dramatically from 7.7 ± 0.4 to 95.5 ± 35.3 days. In the low-greenhouse-gas-emission RCP 2.6 scenario, heatwave intensity and duration will increase to 4.0 ± 0.2 degrees Celsius and 27.0 ± 7.6 days, respectively. Surface heatwaves are longer-lasting but less intense in deeper lakes (up to 60 metres deep) than in shallower lakes during both historic and future periods. As lakes warm during the twenty-first century, their heatwaves will begin to extend across multiple seasons, with some lakes reaching a permanent heatwave state. Lake heatwaves are likely to exacerbate the adverse effects of long-term warming in lakes and exert widespread influence on their physical structure and chemical properties. Lake heatwaves could alter species composition by pushing aquatic species and ecosystems to the limits of their resilience. This in turn could threaten lake biodiversity and the key ecological and economic benefits that lakes provide to society
Impacts of Extreme Weather Events on Bacterial Community Composition of a Temperate Humic Lake
Get PDFExtreme weather events are projected to increase in frequency and intensity as climate change continues. Heterotrophic bacteria play a critical role in lake ecosystems, yet little research has been done to determine how they are affected by such extremes. The purpose of this study was to use high-throughput sequencing to explore the bacterial community composition of a humic oligotrophic lake on the North Atlantic Irish coast and to assess the impacts on composition dynamics related to extreme weather events. Samples for sequencing were collected from Lough Feeagh on a fortnightly basis from April to November 2018. Filtration was used to separate free-living and particle-associated bacterial communities and amplicon sequencing was performed for the 16S rRNA V4 region. Two named storms, six high discharge events, and one drought period occurred during the sampling period. These events had variable, context dependent effects on bacterial communities in Lough Feeagh. The particle-associated community was found to be more likely to respond to physical changes, such as mixing, while the free-living population responded to changes in nutrient and carbon concentrations. Generally, however, the high stability of the bacterial community observed in Lough Feeagh suggests that the bacterial community is relatively resilient to extreme weather events
Global reconstruction of twentieth century lake surface water temperature reveals different warming trends depending on the climatic zone
Get PDFLake surface water temperatures (LSWTs) are sensitive to climate change, but previous studies have typically focused on temperatures from only the last few decades. Thus, while there is good appreciation of LSWT warming in recent decades, our understanding of longer-term temperature change is comparatively limited. In this study, we use a mechanistically based open-source model (air2water), driven by air temperature from a state-of-the-art global atmospheric reanalysis (ERA-20C) and calibrated with satellite-derived LSWT observations (ARC-Lake v3), to investigate the long-term change in LSWT worldwide. The predictive ability of the model is tested across 606 lakes, with 91% of the lakes showing a daily root mean square error smaller than 1.5 °C. Model performance was better at mid-latitudes and decreased towards the equator. The results illustrated highly variable mean annual LSWT trends during the twentieth century and across climatic regions. Substantial warming is evident after ~ 1980 and the most responsive lakes to climate change are located in the temperate regions
Late summer peak in pCO2 corresponds with catchment export of DOC in a temperate, humic lake
Get PDFHumic lakes play a key role in the processing of organic carbon (OC) mobilised from their catchments, but knowledge of OC dynamics in lakes within maritime temperate climates is limited. Climate exerts a significant influence on mechanisms of OC capture, storage, and processing on the wet and cloudy west coast of Ireland. We examined a high-frequency dataset of partial pressure of CO2 (pCO2) in the surface waters of Lough Feeagh collected over 1 year. The annual pattern in pCO2 ranged between 491 and 1169 µatm and was strongly related to allochthonous riverine OC inputs. In contrast to observations in colder climates, a single peak in pCO2 occurred in Lough Feeagh in early September. Generalised additive mixed modelling revealed that 2 variables, inflow water colour concentration (a reliable proxy for DOC concentrations) and lake Schmidt stability, together explained 68% of pCO2 variability. Both the statistical analysis and timing of the peaks in inflow DOC and pCO2 strongly suggested that catchment carbon export drove pCO2 supersaturation in the lake, and hence CO2 emissions. We estimated that between 217 and 370 t CO2-C (0.55–0.94 t/ha) was emitted during the study period. These results highlight the interplay between catchment OC fluxes and climate in determining pCO2 dynamics in maritime temperate lakes
An investigation into the influences of catchment nutrient export and climatic effects on the trophic status of a small inter-drumlin lake, Milltown Lake, Co. Monaghan.
Get PDFEutrophication is an on-going problem in lakes that are nutrient enriched. In addition, lakes are now subject to changes in the local weather, which is linked to climate change. Understanding the way that climate affects nutrient export and changes within lakes is critical if lakes are to be improved and protected in the future. This thesis has examined this by looking at number of different factors, which include: (1) the role of nutrients exported from the surrounding landscape and how agricultural mitigation measures (e.g. comparing a fenced stream with a vegetative buffer strips to an unfenced stream which had no fencing installed), can be used to decrease nutrient loss from the land to water, (2) examining local climatic factors and their role, either directly or indirectly, in influencing lake biota, particularly in lakes where nutrient supplies are not limiting, and finally (3) determining how phytoplankton richness is influenced by changes in water column stability during the onset of spring stratification. The study within the catchment found net retention of nutrients (TP and TN) occurred during the Grazing season (cattle grazing in the field) in the fenced stream reach, while during the Open season (slurry spreading permitted, but cattle still indoors) the reverse was seen for TP only, suggesting that different processes were controlling export of nutrients in both the fenced and unfenced reach. Despite the net TP release in the Open season, the estimated TP and TN loads on an annual basis were lower for the fenced stream, compared to that of the unfenced stream. Regarding local climatic factors, results showed that in the epilimnion of Milltown Lake, surface nutrient loading (mainly P) and light were more significant than internal lake nutrient resuspension, while N availability was more influential in controlling the standing crop of phytoplankton at the lower lake depths. In general, catchment management strategies are devised to reduce nutrient loads from the surrounding catchment in order to protect and improve catchment waterbodies, which this study has shown to be achieved through the implementation of streamside fencing with a vegetative buffer strip. However, this study has also shown that more attention is needed in understanding the internal lake sediment nutrient release, should catchment load be reduced, it is this legacy source of nutrients that is likely to play a significant role in determining a lake’s trophic status