1522 research outputs found
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Analysis of Financial Data Using Non-Negative Matrix Factorization
Get PDFWe apply Non-negative Matrix Factorization (NMF) to the problem of identifying underlying trends in stock market data. NMF is a recent and very successful tool for data analysis including image and audio processing; we use it here to decompose a mixture a data, the daily closing prices of the 30 stocks which make up the Dow Jones Industrial Average, into its constitute parts, the underlying trends which govern the Financial marketplace. We demonstrate how to impose appropriate sparsity and smoothness constraints on the components of the
decomposition. Also, we describe how the method clusters stocks together in performance-based groupings which can be used for portfolio diversification
MANAGING KNOWLEDGE WITHIN THE LEADING IRISH CONSTRUCTION ORGANISATIONS: CURRENT PRACTICES AND FUTURE DIRECTIONS
Get PDFDespite the benefits which knowledge management (KM) can bring to construction organisations there appears to be a lack of understanding in relation to both knowledge and its management in practice. In the context of Irish construction, both Engineers Ireland (EI), and the Construction Information Technology Alliance (CITA) have identified KM as important to the future competitiveness of the industry.
The findings of interviews with senior management from ten of the leading Irish construction organisations are presented, having been selected as they are perceived to possess the most advanced organisational processes. Three ontological dimensions were explored; individual, project and organisational, with a view to identifying current approaches to managing knowledge. The findings confirm that these organisations lack a proper understanding of KM, yet recognise the need for a more structured, coherent approach.
The paper proposes the establishment of a strategic framework to improve the understanding of KM within the leading organisations, through a collaborative approach between academia, industry, EI and CITA. A central feature of this framework will be the development of a KM model which will be evaluated by participating organisations for its practicality
An examination of the client's contribution to the design of longitudinal tracking systems in adult guidance practice.
Get PDFThis article discusses the important contribution of the 'users' of adult guidance services in the quality assurance process. It specifically addresses current interpretive research being carried out in the Waterford Institute of Technology on the topic of longitudinal tracking of client progression in Ireland
Introduction to COIL
No full textBy reciprocal arrangement between WIT and the National College of Ireland, you are now able to access their collection directly - more than 100,000 items. This
form of direct consortial borrowing has never been tried before in Ireland.
Before you borrow your first book, you will have to set up a COIL account, which is straightforward. The items which you reserve online will be posted to us, for you to collect, at the front desk in the Luke Wadding library, afterwards.
The Initiative is called COIL, which stands for Consortium Of Irish Libraries.
During the initial launch phase, there will be no charge for these loans, but we may need to levy a charge to recover our postage costs.
This video gives an overview of COIL
Reflective Practice and Blogs: Developing a new model for assessment
Get PDFReflective Practice, for many years, has been widely used as a learning activity in higher education. The introduction of blogs as a tool for reflection is more recent. In education, blogs can empower the learner by providing him/her with an individual learning space.
Studies have shown that blogs are effective as online learning journals and can bring an element of collaboration to the reflective learning process. To date, however, there has been no large-scale study which compares depth of reflection in blogs with depth of reflection in paper-based learning logs. This study aims to address this issue.
A Delphi study was conducted with a group of Reflective Practice experts. The experts involved in the study had experience of teaching or using Reflective Practice, and had published in this area. The purpose of this study was to develop a set of indicators which will be used to assess depth of reflection.
A content analysis will be conducted on samples of reflective text. These samples will be taken from both online learning journals, such as blogs, and ‘offline’ learning journals, such as paper-based learning logs. The samples will be assessed for depth of reflection and comparisons will be made.
Although this study is still in its early stages, the Delphi study has been completed. Results from this study show that, when assessing reflection, Reflective Practice experts tend to rely heavily on existing models of Reflective Practice. However, these models focus on reflection as a solitary activity rather than a collaborative one. In several recent studies, instruments for the assessment of reflective text have been developed. Again, these studies assess Reflective Practice as an isolated process and do not consider the effect of interaction and feedback on students’ reflections.
The use of blogs brings a collaborative element to the process of Reflective Practice. Due to the interactive nature of blogs, students may receive more feedback from their tutors or peers on their reflections. Therefore existing models of Reflective Practice may need to be updated in order to effectively assess online learning journals, such as blogs.
The next phase of this study aims to develop an instrument which can effectively assess the depth of reflection in both online and offline learning journals. Using this instrument, a content analysis of reflective text will be conducted. Comparisons will be made between the depth of reflection in online learning journals, such as blogs, and offline learning journals, such as paper-based learning logs. It is hypothesised that students who receive higher levels of feedback due to the online, interactive nature of blogs will improve the depth and quality of their reflections over the course of their studies
The determinants of lifestyle counselling among practice nurses in Ireland
Get PDFAim: To assess the practice of lifestyle counselling among practice nurses (PNs) by measuring the frequency, perceived effectiveness and barriers to lifestyle counselling. Methods: A survey questionnaire was sent to all 77 PNs in an Irish health service administrative area (response rate = 69%). A focus group was subsequently conducted with ten PNs from this sample. Results: 43.8% (n = 21) and 45.8% (n = 22) ‘always’ promote physical activity and healthy eating with patients, respectively. Conversely, 29.2% (n = 14) of respondents stated they ‘rarely’ or ‘never’ counsel patients on risky drinking. Furthermore, a large number of PNs perceived themselves to be ‘minimally effective’ or ‘ineffective’ at helping patients to address smoking and risky drinking (47.6%, n = 20 and 63.6%, n = 28, respectively). Practice nurses perceived themselves to be the most appropriate people to provide lifestyle counselling. Education and the provision of accurate information is a key strategy used with patients. Insufficient time, however, was cited as the main barrier to lifestyle counselling by 73.8% (n = 31) of PNs
Evaluation of Cover Crop and Reduced Cultivation for Reducing Nitrate Leaching in Ireland
No full textNitrate (NO3) loss from arable systems to surface and groundwater has attracted considerable attention in recent years in Ireland. Little information exists under Irish conditions, which are wet and temperate, on the eff ects of winter cover crops and diff erent tillage techniques on NO3 leaching. This study investigated the effi cacy of such practices in reducing NO3 leaching from a spring barley (Hordeum vulgare L.) system in the Barrow River valley, southeast Ireland. The study compared the eff ect of two tillage systems (plow-based tillage and noninversion tillage) and two over-winter alternatives (no vegetative cover and a mustard cover crop) on soil solution NO3 concentrations at 90 cm depth over two winter drainage seasons (2003/04 and 2004/05). Soil samples were taken and analyzed for inorganic N. During both years of the study, the use of a mustard cover crop signifi cantly reduced NO3 losses for the plowed and reduced cultivation treatments. Mean soil solution NO3 concentrations were between 38 and 70% lower when a cover crop was used, and total N load lost over the winter was between 18 and 83% lower. Results from this study highlight the importance of drainage volume and winter temperatures on NO3 concentrations in soil solution and overall N load lost. It is suggested that cover crops will be of particular value in reducing NO3 loss in temperate regions with mild winters, where winter N mineralization is important and high winter temperatures favor a long growing season
Threshold Concepts: Enabling Open Dialogue on Teaching and Learning within and across Traditional Boundaries?
Get PDFEntwistle (2003) identified one of the outputs of the UK ETL research project as developing more precise ways of thinking about university teaching and learning. An important outcome of this research project has been the development of a set of concepts in respect of the quality of learning, particularly focusing on the pedagogical concepts of troublesome knowledge, threshold concepts and delayed understanding.
Meyer and Land (2005) suggest that within each discipline, field or profession there are threshold concepts which integrate and define the scope of the academic community with which a student is engaging. These threshold concepts can be 'considered akin to passing through a portal, or conceptual gateway, thus opening up a new and previously inaccessible way of thinking about something' (Meyer and Land, 2003). Such concepts lead to a transformed way of understanding, or viewing something that may represent how people 'think' in a particular discipline, or how they perceive, apprehend or experience particular phenomena within a discipline. These concepts usually have five attributes: they are transformative, irreversible, integrative, bounded and troublesome. Threshold concepts have potential to encourage students towards deep rather than surface learning.
The workshop will introduce some of the international current research on threshold concepts. It will focus on their application both as an analytical framework for understanding the student learning journey and for developing and evaluating curriculum and assessment in Higher Education.
The workshop will be a forum for discussion with classroom practitioners and educational researchers on the potential for threshold concepts to be an enabler and energiser of open dialogue and inquiry into teaching and learning within and across traditional institution and disciplinary boundaries
An Adaptive Middleware Applied to the Ad-hoc Nature of Cardiac Health Care
Get PDFHeart disease is the number one killer in the civilized world, accounting for around 1.9 million people every year in the EU, with the associated annual health costs of approximately EUR 105 billion. Important aspects of treating cardiac problems are monitoring and directing critical data to key individuals. The middleware proposed in this paper interacts with ECG sensors and provides a dynamic decision making framework for forming critical decisions when defined thresholds are exceeded. The
middleware and its defined services target the embedded device domain which has an existing large scale deployment within the healthcare sector. The services help to ease development and address problems like dynamic grouping, load balancing and providing a uniform level of abstraction from the underlying network
Illuminating the Relationship Between Line Managers and HR Professionsals A Social Exchange Perspective
Get PDFCognisant of the importance of organisational relationships, Krackhardt & Hanson (1993:104) assert that despite formal structures, much of the work within them is facilitated by the “…networks of relationships that employees form across functions and divisions to accomplish tasks”. The impetus for line manager-HR professional the relationship is rooted in the integrative HRM models proffered by Guest (1987), Storey (1992) and Ulrich (1998). The literature on the involvement of line managers in HRM identifies both collaborative and, at times, uncooperative relational dynamics between line managers and HR professionals in terms of their preparation for, and the delivery of, HRM. In building a case for illuminating the line manager-HR professional relationship, calls in the literature highlight that a paucity of attention has been placed on identifying the operationalisation and social dynamics of line-HR professional collaboration. Consequently, the theory of social exchange may have particular utility “…to penetrate beneath the veneer of formal institutions, groups, and goals, down to the relational subtract” (Padgett & Ansell, 1993:1259), serving to explore the underpinning relationship between collaborating individuals. The objective of this paper, therefore, is to illuminate understanding of the cross-functional line-HR relationship as previously presented by the authors (Power, Garavan, & Milner, 2007), through an emerging social exchange lens. In pursuit of this, a conceptual framework is developed in conjunction to a case study research design operationalisation offered, incorporating the deployment of a social penetration focus (Altman & Taylor, 1973), linking the collective social exchange theory to an individual-level of focus towards the sense-making processes (Weick, 1995), of line manager and HR professional exchange actors