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Insider Action Research Doctorates: Creating Transformative Learning Spaces in Professional Development in Higher Education
No full textThis paper reports findings from an exploration of how action research as a method of inquiry used within an Ed.D program at the University of Georgia can enhance the teaching-learning environment and create opportunities for transformative learning to occur. The key components of the UGA signature pedagogy are i) scholar leaders, and ii) leading change through action research.
The purpose of this study is to explore transformative learning among a faculty community of practice focused on reinventing doctoral education. This study will use critical incident methods to explore incidents when faculty felt their perspective shift about the nature and rigor of doctoral education in the course of implementing this new doctoral program.
The specific context for this research study was the Ed.D degree in Adult Education, Learning & Organisation Development (AELOD) delivered at the University of Georgia’s Department of Lifelong Education, Administration and Policy. The purpose of this study was to explore faculty perspective transformations around about the nature of the doctorate through an exploration ofcreating and delivering an innovative doctoral program.
Keywords: Action Research, perspective transformation, doctorateness, threshold concepts, professional doctorates, higher educatio
Screen Time Increases Risk of Overweight and Obesity
Get PDFBackground: Independent associations between screen time (ST)/physical activity (PA) and overweight (OW)/obesity have been
demonstrated but little research exists on the role of ST among sufficiently active children. Purpose: To examine the combined
influence of ST and PA on risk of OW/obesity in a nationally representative sample of 9-year-old Irish children. Methods: The
sample in this cross sectional analysis contained 8568 children. Self-report parent data were used to group children into ST and
PA categories and related to OW/obesity using forced entry logistic regression. Results: High ST (> 3 hours/day), bedroom
TV and mobile phone ownership increased risk of OW/obesity in high and low active children (P < .05). Low PA (<9 bouts
fortnightly) was also associated with OW/obesity. In combined analyses, OW/obesity was lowest in the reference low ST/high
PA group with ORs of 1.38, 1.63, and 2.07, respectively, in the low ST/low PA, high ST/high PA, and high ST/low PA groups.
Access to electronic media, low socioeconomic status, parental obesity, and not engaging in sports were all related to high ST
(P < .05). Conclusion: This study supports findings that ST is associated with OW/Obesity demonstrating this separately in
high and low active children
The DNA Toolbox: Development and optimisation of molecular techniques to identify red squirrels (Sciurus vulgaris)
Get PDFThe red squirrel (Sciurus vulgaris) has seen a population decline in Ireland and Britain over the last 100 years since the introduction of the North American grey squirrel (Sciurus carolineneis). The decline has been attributed to a number of factors including habitat loss and direct competition with the invasive grey squirrel. As a result, there is a growing need to monitor the distribution of both species for conservation management. Squirrels can be surveyed non-invasively using hair-tubes, and the species can be identified by microscopic identification of individual hairs. To increase the information obtained from non-invasive surveys a suite of DNA tools to identify both squirrel species from non-invasive DNA samples were developed in this study. This involved the design of real-time PCR assays designed to amplify short DNA fragments of red and grey squirrel DNA. A molecular dietary study of pine marten (Martes martes) scats using the species-specific assays to detect squirrel DNA in the pine marten diet was also conducted. Methods to determine the gender of squirrels were investigated by testing the utility of a range of Y-chromosome markers. A panel of previously published microsatellite DNA markers were screened and optimised to identify individual red squirrels. The techniques were applied to a hair-tube study in County Waterford, South East Ireland, where individual red squirrels were identified. Additional samples were collected from subpopulations throughout Ireland, and a remnant red squirrel population in mid Wales where the genetic variability of the populations were assessed using microsatellite genotyping and mitochondrial DNA sequencing. The combination of these tools can be used for non-invasive monitoring and translocation projects of the red squirrel
A Portfolio of Original Compositions Volume 1 of 2
Get PDFSince my undergraduate studies, where I majored in composition for my final degree, it
was always my ambition to undertake further studies in the area of composition.
Family and career became more important in the intervening years and my composing
voice was very much a silent one. It was not forgotten however. The opportunity arose
in September 2008 to commence studies for a Masters Degree in composition. Once
the doubts were put to rest, the manuscript and pencil were put to work and the first
sketches for Muse began to emerge.
Now, as I come to the end of my Master Studies, I am happy I took the decision to
begin composing again. It has been a journey of mixed emotions from start to finish,
elation to frustration with many tears, smiles and hugs along the way. All of the
emotions experienced have in some way contributed to my music, many of which gave
me the drive to continue.
I have particularly enjoyed working with all the musicians, both amateur and
professional, for the performances of my music. At times I know I became very
involved with rehearsing and conducting for the performances, which in itself became
very time consuming. However, I would not change the time I spent with the
musicians, as I believe working with them kept me grounded and focused. At the same
time it made me believe I was a composer with a voice, whilst reaffirming to me that I
want to remain being a composer into the future. The time spent with the musicians
afforded me as a composer and conductor a very personal journey with every
composition. I cannot thank all the performers enough for willingly giving their time to
rehearse and perform my music.
The highlights for me throughout this course of study would have to be both the
premiere performance of Celebration Mass in 2011 and its subsequent live television
broadcast on Radio Telifís Éireann in 2012. It was truly a wonderful experience both
personally and professionally to have my music broadcast on RTE television. Working
and liaising with RTE in the months leading up to the live broadcast was indeed an
extremely busy time. It was a time I gained huge knowledge and experience that I
hopefully will utilise into the future.
There have been times I have asked myself 'why didn't I do this earlier when I was
younger ?'.......I know my journey would have been different at a younger age, but as
we know with age you gain a certain wisdom with life experiences. I believe my life
experiences are reflected in the music presented in this portfolio, they are who I am
now................Julie Quinlan, composer
Central Retinal Enrichment Supplementation Trials (CREST): design and methodology of the CREST randomized controlled trials.
Get PDFPURPOSE:The Central Retinal Enrichment Supplementation Trials (CREST) aim to investigate the potential impact of macular pigment (MP) enrichment, following supplementation with a formulation containing 10 mg lutein (L), 2 mg zeaxanthin (Z) and 10 mg meso-zeaxanthin (MZ), on visual function in normal subjects (Trial 1) and in subjects with early age-related macular degeneration (AMD; Trial 2).
METHODS:CREST is a single center, double-blind, randomized clinical trial. Trial 1 (12-month follow-up) subjects are randomly assigned to a formulation containing 10 mg L, 10 mg MZ and 2 mg Z (n = 60) or placebo (n = 60). Trial 2 (24-month follow-up) subjects are randomly assigned to a formulation containing 10 mg L, 10 mg MZ, 2 mg Z plus 500 mg vitamin C, 400 IU vitamin E, 25 mg zinc and 2 mg copper (Intervention A; n = 75) or 10 mg L and 2 mg Z plus 500 mg vitamin C, 400 IU vitamin E, 25 mg zinc and 2 mg copper (Intervention B; n = 75). Contrast sensitivity (CS) at 6 cycles per degree represents the primary outcome measure in each trial. Secondary outcomes include: CS at other spatial frequencies, MP, best-corrected visual acuity, glare disability, photostress recovery, light scatter, cognitive function, foveal architecture, serum carotenoid concentrations, and subjective visual function. For Trial 2, AMD morphology, reading speed and reading acuity are also being recorded.
CONCLUSIONS:CREST is the first study to investigate the impact of supplementation with all three macular carotenoids in the context of a large, double-blind, randomized clinical trial
The Provision of Antenatal Care for Low Risk Pregnant Women in the South Eastern Region of Ireland: A Mixed Methods Study [Volume 1]
No full textMidwives are specialists in normal pregnancy and midwifery led care (MLC) is recommended as being the most appropriate type of care for low risk pregnant women. MLC offers a choice for birth at home or in hospital with total care provided by midwives. MLC provides continuity of care, choice, and develops trusting relationships. A pregnancy is considered ‘low risk’ if the woman is without pre-existing medical conditions or pregnancy complications. In Ireland, maternity services continue to utilise the medical led model of care which limits choice for women. This presents challenges for midwives in developing MLC and consequently women may not be aware of alternative choices and accessibility of these schemes. Whilst MLC initiatives have been established in some parts of Ireland, developments are slow in comparison to other countries. The aim of this research was to explore the perceptions of women and their care providers of the provision of antenatal care. This was achieved through a 3 Phase mixed methods design. Data collection involved a descriptive survey (n=394) and 12 focus groups involving pregnant women and multidisciplinary professionals. Data analysis used Predictive Analytics Software (PASW) and the focus groups were subjected to a content analysis framework. The study identified a lack of awareness and understanding of the concept of a ‘low risk’ pregnancy. Consequently, a lack of information and available options of care were identified by women and care providers. This lack of information led to feelings of disempowerment in relation to choice, communication and decision-making processes. Findings also demonstrated excessive waiting times and congested antenatal clinics. Further collaboration and communication is required between general practitioners and antenatal clinics to streamline future services for women. Recommendations include the development of group antenatal care to enhance access to MLC and decision-making processes that will offer more choice for women. Keywords: Antenatal care services; low risk pregnant women; provision of information; access to care; decision making
Kinetic and thermodynamic evaluation of phosphate ions binding onto sevelamer hydrochloride
Get PDFSevelamer hydrochloride is the
first non-aluminium, non-calcium-based phosphate binder developed for
the management of hyperphosphatemia in end stage renal diseases. It is a synthetic ion-exchange
polymer which binds and removes phosphate ions due to the high content of cationic charge associated
with protonated amine groups on the polymer matrix. This is the
first in-depth study investigating
phosphate removal in vitro from aqueous solutions using commercially available sevelamer
hydrochloride at physiological conditions of phosphate level, pH and temperature. The kinetic and
thermodynamic parameters of phosphate binding onto the sevelamer hydrochloride particles were
evaluated in order to define the binding process. A series of kinetic studies were carried out in order to
delineate the effect of initial phosphate concentration, absorbent dose and temperature on the rate of
binding. The results were analysed using three kinetic models with the best-fit of the experimental data
obtained using a pseudo-second order model. Thermodynamic parameters provide in-depth information
on inherent energetic changes that are associated with binding. Free energy DG�, enthalpy DH�, and
entropy DS� changes were calculated in this study in order to assess the relationship of these parameters
to polymer morphology. The binding reaction was found to be a spontaneous endothermic process with
increasing entropy at the solid–liquid interface
Machine Learning based Stochastic Techniques for Collaborative Privacy in Social Recommender Services
Get PDFA variety of online social services have been developed over the last decade. They have all had a profound effect on today’s society. With the emergence of Web 2.0 and the popularity of social media, there has been a growing demand to provide services supporting social network platforms. New services are constantly being develpoed, where an increasing volume of personal data is being processed in return for personally tailored services. This result in creating mature systems to satisfy users’ needs is referred to as social recommender services that create an inevitable trend driven by mutual benefits. The penetration of these services has been relatively slow recently since there still exists different viewpoints regarding the exploitation (and thus potential) of those services amongst researchers and users.
One major concern regarding their adoption lies in privacy considerations of the users while using these services. With the increasing amount of personal data that users distribute over different services, there is an increased probability for identity fraud, profiling and linkability attacks, that not only poses a threat to those people’s personal dignity and affects different aspects of their lives, but also to societies as a whole. In most cases, this can prevent users from fully embracing these services whereas most of the “privacy-concerned” systems that have been developed so far, are either based on a trusted third-party model or on some generalized architecture.
This thesis focuses primarily on social recommender services which are of great interest. On the one hand, they lay the groundwork for new innovative applications but on the other hand they pose numerous unique challenges to privacy. We studied the privacy problem faced by people in sharing their profiles’ preferences within various scenarios of social recommender services. We proposed and developed a collaborative privacy approach for preserving users’ profile privacy and we have applied this approach to representative scenarios: (I.) Recommender service for IPTV content providers; (II.) Data Mash-up services for IPTV recommender services and (III.) Community discovery and recommendation services for implicit social groups (conference organization and university campus). Location based recommendation services, mobile jukebox content recommender services and pervasive healthcare services were studied and enhanced as well in order to show the applicability of our approach. We discussed how our approach could handle the privacy problem in these scenarios. In Addition, the proposed collaborative privacy framework was developed as a middleware that hosts a set of components to execute a two stage concealment process with novel stochastic techniques. Each stage in the two stage concealment process is carried out by completely different parties depending on their role in the coalition. The proposed middleware as well as the set of components and techniques that is employed in its implementation, permit the end-users to control the privacy of their released data while interacting with social recommender services. This kind of approach is quite flexible and can easily be adopted in conventional social recommender services because it is executed on the user side and takes advantage of the social structure that is offered by the online social service without the need for significant modifications at the service provider side. The attained accuracy and privacy levels for the data concealed using the proposed stochastic techniques in different scenarios were evaluated. Moreover, attacks on such concealed data were presented to demonstrate the stability of our proposed techniques against such attacks. Finally, we applied off-the-shelf recommendation techniques to make referrals as a show case. Therefore, the experimental results show that the proposed approach obtains accurate results similar to unsecured services, while at the same time meeting users’ privacy concerns
Biotransformations Using Nitrile Hydrolysing Enzymes For Stereoselective Organic Synthesis
Get PDFNitrile hydrolysing enzymes have found wide use in the pharmaceutical industry for the production of fine chemicals. This work presents a strategy that facilitates the rapid identification of bacterial isolates demonstrating nitrile hydrolysing activity. The strategy incorporates toxicity, starvation and induction studies along with subsequent colorimetric screening for activity, further focusing the assessment towards the substrates of interest. This high-throughput strategy uses a 96 well plate system, and has enabled the rapid biocatalytic screening of 256 novel bacterial isolates towards β- hydroxynitriles. Results demonstrate the strategy’s potential to rapidly assess a variety of β-hydroxynitriles including aliphatic, aromatic and dinitriles. A whole cell catalyst Rhodococcus erythropolis SET1 was identified and found to catalyse the hydrolysis of 3-hydroxybutyronitrile with remarkably high enantioselectivity under mild conditions, to afford (S)-3-hydroxybutyric acid in 42% yield and >99.9% ee. The biocatalytic capability of this strain including the variation of parameters such as temperature and time were further investigated and all results indicate the presence of a highly enantioselective if not enantiospecific nitrilase enzyme within the microbial whole cell. We present substrate evaluation with 34 chiral nitriles of Rhodococcus erythropolis SET1. These substrates consist primarily of β-hydroxy nitriles with varying alkyl and aryl groups at the β-position containing in some cases, various substituents at the α- position. In the case of β-hydroxy nitriles unsubstituted at the α-position, acids were the major products as a result of suspected nitrilase activity of the isolate. Unexpectedly, amides were found to be the major products when β-hydroxynitriles were substituted at the α-position with a vinyl group. Therefore this novel isolate has demonstrated additional NHase behaviour which is dependent on the functionality at the α-position. In order to probe this mechanism further related substrates were evaluated and amide was observed where other electron withdrawing groups were present at the α-position. Additionally various parameters which may influence the biocatalytic hydrolysis by SET1 were studied and are presented herein
A Novel, Free-Space Broadband Dielectric Measurement Technique
Get PDFFrequently, when free-space electromagnetic waves pass through a material, there will be some form of interaction between the wave and the material. Measuring this change forms the basis of free-space, dielectric material measurement, where the variations will be attenuation and a phase change relative to the wave when the material was not present and are typically recorded over a broadband range of frequencies.
In this work a new technique is presented to accurately perform free-space broadband material measurement to calculate the dielectric response of materials of unknown electrical length. (In this thesis, the electrical length means that while the physical length of the path is known, the number of wavelengths in the material is unknown, due to the unknown permittivity. This unknown number of wavelengths is described as the electrical length both here and also in many other works.) The technique is eventually applied to a more difficult form of material to measure, which is material in the form of powders and liquids. Powders and liquids present a particularly difficult challenge in that they must also be contained in a container of uniform shape and sufficient cross-section to guarantee that the entire received wave has passed through the same amount of material. The technique presented works for containment vessels with no or some dielectric response (respectively being relatively easy analysis and very difficult for dielectric analysis).
Much of the work is devoted to the development of a test infrastructure and also a new vector network analyser (VNA) calibration technique that would be more appropriate to this infrastructure and kind of measurement than existing techniques. In terms of the latter point, to minimise measurement errors a free-space, broadband Thru-Reflect-Line/Match (TRL/M) calibration technique was developed. The challenge of a test structure for materials with an unknown electric length was met by offering the ability to vary the thickness of material through which the probing wave passes. Moreover, the range over which the thickness could vary was quite large (3 mm up to 18 cm) to accommodate
materials of unknown electrical length with dielectric constant values over a wide range (2 to 80).
Two measurement techniques are presented based on horizontal and vertical probing wave propagation, both of which allow for a series of measurements to be taken where the varying parameter is thickness of material under test. However, the horizontal propagation measurements required an extra containment layer (to contain the powder/liquid on both sides normal to the propagation, rather like a large, slim fish tank), compared to the vertical propagation measurement, but had significant mechanical and also the computational difficulties mentioned earlier. The vertical propagation measurements on the other hand show more promise, both in terms of mechanical containment and also in the inversion of the measured S-parameters to arrive at the complex electric permittivity.
The measurements were performed in a large hall and also in a Radio Frequency (RF) anechoic chamber (optimal test range of approximately 500 MHz – 18 GHz).
Several diverse solid materials were tested initially in developing the test infrastructure including double glazed standard and low emissivity windows, common building materials, house insulation materials and automobile glass. Once the platform and calibration technique were competed to a satisfactory level, measurements intended for dielectric analysis were carried out on commercial glass panes, water and household plain flour. All measurements were subsequently published in various conferences and workshops, hosted by the IEEE, IEEE Communications Society, IET, the European Association on Antennas and Propagation (EurAAP) and the Royal Irish Academy’s research Colloquium on Communications and Radio Sciences workshop