Despite a growing literature about the mental health effects of COVID-19, less is known about the psychological costs of providing informal care during the pandemic. We examined longitudinal data from the UK’s Under-standing Society Survey, including eight COVID surveys, to estimate fixed effects difference-in-differences models combined with matching, to explore the causal effects of COVID-19 among informal carers. While matching accounts for selection on observables into caregiving, multiple period difference-in-differences specifications allow investigation of heterogeneous...

Validation is a critical stage of the equipment design process as it provides documentary evidence that the equipment is performing as per specification and ensures consistent product quality is maintained at all times. The advent of Industry 4.0 has led to a requirement for reconfigurable manufacturing systems as manufacturers adapt to an increased customer demand for personalised products. As equipment control software becomes increasingly complex to accommodate these equirements, a new approach to equipment validation...

The law on healthcare decision-making in Ireland is in a period of transition and will be enhanced with the full commencement of the Assisted Decision-Making (Capacity) Act (ADMC Act) 2015. The legislation is intended to empower a person to make decisions relating to their healthcare and personal affairs where they lack or may in the future lack the capacity to make their own decisions. This is especially relevant for the older person in terms of...

The law on healthcare decision-making in Ireland is in a period of transition and will be enhanced with the full commencement of the Assisted Decision-Making (Capacity) Act (ADMC Act) 2015. The legislation is intended to empower a person to make decisions relating to their healthcare and personal affairs where they lack or may in the future lack the capacity to make their own decisions. This is especially relevant for the older person in terms of...

A magnetically separable palladium nanocatalyst has been synthesized through the immobilization of palladium onto 3-aminopropylphenanthroline Schiff based functionalized silica coated superparamagnetic Fe3O4 nanoparticles. The nanocatalyst (Fe3O4@SiNSB-Pd) was fully characterized using several spectroscopic techniques, such as FT-IR, HR-SEM, TEM, XRD, ICP, and XPS. The microscopic image of Fe3O4 showed spherical shape morphology and had an average size of 150 nm. The Pd-nanoparticles exhibited an average size 3.5 ± 0.6 nm. The successful functionalization of Fe3O4@SiNSB-Pd was...

The C5a peptidase from Streptococcus pyogenes (ScpA) is a highly specific enzyme with potential therapeutic value. ScpA is a good model for studying determinants of specificity in the multidomain immunomodulatory enzymes (IMEs), which comprise a large family of bacterial surface proteases. The surface exposed region of ScpA has 5 main domains which includes 3 C-terminal Fn3-like domains (Fn1, Fn2 and Fn3) (Kagawa et al. 2009). Progressive deletion of the Fn3-like domains from the C-ter resulted...

Porpose: This review aimed to collate and summarize available research literature about wheelchair service provision education available to healthcare professional students, healthcare personnel and educators across low- to high-resourced settings. Methods: The Joanna Briggs Institute methodological steps for scoping reviews were followed. Included studies were mainly sourced from Medline, Embase, CINAHL, Scopus, Academic Search Complete and ProQuest. Independent title, abstract and full-text screening with defined inclusion and exclusion criteria was performed. All screening and extraction...

Spherical particles based on materials of natural origin have recently gained increased attention because of their unique properties, including shape, structure, and ability to combine with other materials. Lignin has potential to be applied across multiple sectors, with recent focus on its valorization in high end application routes which favor its renewability, biocompatibility, and non-toxicity. The most promising findings are reported, that spherical lignin particles are a very effective carrier and delivery vehicle for active...

Private sector tax practitioners are often accused of unethical behavior in developing contrived tax avoidance arrangements. Such arrangements usually comply with the letter of the law but contravene its underlying (often unstated) ‘spirit’. Prior research comparing the ethical reasoning of private sector tax practitioners, government revenue tax practitioners and a non-tax (control) group in both social and tax contexts found no significant differences between them in a social context. However, where tax dilemmas were concerned,...

This paper presents a proof-of-concept method for classifying chemical compounds directly from NMR data without performing structure elucidation. This can help to reduce the time in finding good structure candidates, as in most cases matching must be done by a human engineer, or at the very least a process for matching must be meaningfully interpreted by one. The method identified as suitable for classification is a convolutional neural network (CNN). Other methods, including clustering and...

Objectives: To evaluate (1) the feasibility of an audit-feedback intervention to facilitate sports science journal policy change, (2) the reliability of the Transparency of Research Underpinning Social Intervention Tiers (TRUST) policy evaluation form, and (3) the extent to which policies of sports science journals support transparent and open research practices. Methods: We conducted a cross-sectional, audit-feedback, feasibility study of transparency and openness standards of the top 38 sports science journals by impact factor. The TRUST...

Recognition of the importance of authentic leadership is growing in popularity amonlead?ership scholars. However, little remains known about how it is valued or received among practicing school leaders. The purpose of this research was to explore the perspectives and experiences of school leaders with reference to authentic leadership in Irish primary school leaders. As this is a scoping study, a qualitative research design was adopted, using semi-structured interviews with school leaders. Core traits of self-awareness,...

Fundamental properties of the multicomponent diffuse-interface model (DIM), such as the maximum entropy principle and conservation laws, are used to explore the basic interfacial dynamics and phase transitions in fluids. Flat interfaces with monotonically changing densities of the components are proved to be stable. A liquid layer in contact with oversaturated but stable vapour is shown to either fully evaporate or eternally expand (depending on the initial perturbation), whereas a liquid in contact with saturated...

The recent increase in computational capability has led to an unprecedented increase in the range of new applications where machine learning can be used in real time. Notwithstanding the range of use cases where automation is now feasible, humans are likely to retain a critical role in the operation and certification of manufacturing systems for the foreseeable future. This paper presents a use case review of how human operators affect the performance of cyber–physical systems...

Despite a number of public health and policy‐based initiatives, Ireland's national breastfeeding rates are among the lowest globally. Regionally, the Mid‐West of Ireland has historically had low breastfeeding initiation rates, and parts of its major urban area such as Limerick City suffer the highest levels of economic deprivation in the country. In that context, this repeated cross‐sectional study analysed breastfeeding initiation trends in the Mid‐West of Ireland for two decades, from 2001 to 2020 inclusively....

In vitro models provide an important platform for the investigation of cellular growth and atrophy to inform, or extend mechanistic insights from, logistically challenging in vivo trials. Although these models allow for the identification of candidate mechanistic pathways, many models involve supraphysiological dosages, nonphysiological conditions, or experimental changes relating to individual proteins or receptors, all of which limit translation to human trials. To overcome these drawbacks, the use of ex vivo human plasma and serum...

Tissue engineering (TE) has been proposed extensively as a potential solution to the worldwide shortages of donor organs needed for transplantation. Over the years, numerous hydrogel formulations have been studied for various TE endeavours, including bone, cardiac or neural TE treatment strategies. Amongst the materials used, organic and biocompatible materials which aim to mimic the natural extracellular matrix of the native tissue have been investigated to create biomimicry regenerative environments. As such, the comparison between...

The COVID-19 pandemic caused a shift in teaching practice towards blended learning for many higher education institutions. This led to the rapid adoption of certain digital technologies within existing teaching structures as a means to meet student access needs. This paper is an attempt to summarise and extend pre-COVID-19 pedagogical research to leverage digital immersive technologies for blended teaching in the post-pandemic era. This paper forms both a review of these methodologies and a case...

The rapid growth of the Internet and communications has resulted in a huge increase in transmitted data. These data are coveted by attackers and they continuously create novel attacks to steal or corrupt these data. The growth of these attacks is an issue for the security of our systems and represents one of the biggest challenges for intrusion detection. An intrusion detection system (IDS) is a tool that helps to detect intrusions by inspecting the...

Cylindrical shell structures are widely used in aerospace engineering, and buckling considerations often drive their design. However, cylindrical shell structures under compression loading are highly sensitive to imperfections of different nature. Indeed, geometrical, material, loading and boundary imperfections can severely reduce their load-carrying capability. Despite considerable research devoted to geometrical imperfections, relatively little attention has been given to the effects of boundary imperfections on the buckling load of cylindrical shell structures. However, boundary imperfections can...

This article explores the connection between teaching effectiveness and participation in teacher learning communities (TLCs) in the context of a second-level co-educational urban school. In particular, it examines the role of educational leadership in their development and concomitantly toward the enhancement of teaching and learning. Seven teachers contributed to the research across two existing TLCs at the site school. It emerged that relationships and respect amongst the participants are pivotal to their effectiveness. It also...

The effects of commercial enzymes (pectinases, cellulases, beta-1-3-glucanases, and pectin lyases) on the recovery of anthocyanins and polyphenols from blackcurrant press cake were studied considering two solid:solvent ratios (1:10 and 1:4 w/v). β-glucanase enabled the recovery of the highest total phenolic content – 1142 mg/100 g, and the extraction of anthocyanins was similar using all enzymes (~400 mg/100 g). The use of cellulases and pectinases enhanced the extraction of antioxidants (DPPH − 1080 mg/100 g;...

Background There is encouraging evidence that interdisciplinary teams of Health and Social Care Professionals (HSCPs) can enhance patient care in the Emergency Department (ED), especially for older adults with complex needs. However, no formal process evaluations of implementations of ED-based HSCP interventions are available. The study aimed to evaluate the development and delivery of a HSCP team intervention for older adults in the ED of a large Irish teaching hospital. Methods Using the Medical Research...

Aim In Ireland there is a significant, and increasing, shortage of general practitioners. By 2025, this shortfall could be as high as 1,380, from a current workforce of 3,923. We aimed to determine the proportions of EU medical graduates from each of the six Irish medical schools who applied to the national GP Training Program for 2017-21 inclusive. Methods The Spearman rank correlation was used to examine the correlations between the proportions of graduate entrants,...

Background: Atherosclerosis is the primary cause of cardiovascular diseases (CVDs), contributing to more than 33% of the annual deaths globally. Westernized dietary patterns, a high prevalence (50%) of overweight and obesity, and an increased incidence of glucose intolerance and type-2 diabetes are related to atherosclerosis. However, increased demand for functional foods has boosted the production of different foods to improve people’s life quality and decrease the CVDs’ risk. Nonetheless, functional foods targeting CVDs are scarce...