Negotiating the boundaries between home and work practices: The case of home-workers

When people work from home, the domains of home and work are co-located, often under one roof. Home-workers have to cope with the meeting of two practices that have traditionally been physically separated. In light of this, we need to understand: how do people who work from home negotiate the boundaries between their home and work practices? What kinds of boundaries do people construct? How do boundaries affect the relationship between home and work as domains? What kinds of boundaries are available to home-workers? Are home-workers in charge of their boundaries or do they co-create them with others? How does this position home-workers in their domains? In order to address these questions, I analysed a variety of data, including newspaper columns, online forum discussions, interviews, and personal diary entries, using a discourse analytic approach that lends itself to issues of positioning. Current literature clashes over whether home-workers are in control of their boundaries, and over the relationship between home and work that arises out of boundary negotiations, i.e. whether home and work are dichotomous or layered. I seek to contribute to boundary theory by adopting a practice theory stance (Wenger, 1998) to guide my analysis. By viewing home and work as practices, I show that boundary negotiations depend on how home-workers are positioned, e.g. if they are positioned as peripheral in a domain, they lack influence over boundaries. I demonstrate that home and work constitute a number of different practices, rather than a rigid dichotomy, and that the way home and work are related are not the same for all home-workers. The application of practice concepts further shows how relationships between practices are created. The contribution of this work is a reconceptualisation of current boundary theory away from individual and cognitive notions (Nippert-Eng, 1996) into the realm of positioning.

Valuing maternity care: a comparison of stated preference methods with an application to cost-benefit analysis

This research investigates whether a reconfiguration of maternity services, which collocates consultant- and midwifery-led care, reflects demand and value for money in Ireland. Qualitative and quantitative research is undertaken to investigate demand and an economic evaluation is performed to evaluate the costs and benefits of the different models of care. Qualitative research is undertaken to identify women’s motivations when choosing place of delivery. These data are further used to inform two stated preference techniques: a discrete choice experiment (DCE) and contingent valuation method (CVM). These are employed to identify women’s strengths of preferences for different features of care (DCE) and estimate women’s willingness to pay for maternity care (CVM), which is used to inform a cost-benefit analysis (CBA) on consultant- and midwifery-led care. The qualitative research suggests women do not have a clear preference for consultant or midwifery-led care, but rather a hybrid model of care which closely resembles the Domiciliary Care In and Out of Hospital (DOMINO) scheme. Women’s primary concern during care is safety, meaning women would only utilise midwifery-led care when co-located with consultant-led care. The DCE also finds women’s preferred package of care closely mirrors the DOMINO scheme with 39% of women expected to utilise this service. Consultant- and midwifery-led care would then be utilised by 34% and 27% of women, respectively. The CVM supports this hierarchy of preferences where consultant-led care is consistently valued more than midwifery-led care – women are willing to pay €956.03 for consultant-led care and €808.33 for midwifery-led care. A package of care for a woman availing of consultant- and midwifery-led care is estimated to cost €1,102.72 and €682.49, respectively. The CBA suggests both models of care are cost-beneficial and should be pursued in Ireland. This reconfiguration of maternity services would maximise women’s utility, while fulfilling important objectives of key government policy.

Source apportionment of PM2.5 in Cork Harbour, Ireland using a combination of single particle mass spectrometry and quantitative semi-continuous measurements

An aerosol time-of-flight mass spectrometer (ATOFMS) was deployed for the measurement of the size resolved chemical composition of single particles at a site in Cork Harbour, Ireland for three weeks in August 2008. The ATOFMS was co-located with a suite of semi-continuous instrumentation for the measurement of particle number, elemental carbon (EC), organic carbon (OC), sulfate and particulate matter smaller than 2.5 μm in diameter (PM2.5). The temporality of the ambient ATOFMS particle classes was subsequently used in conjunction with the semi-continuous measurements to apportion PM2.5 mass using positive matrix factorisation. The synergy of the single particle classification procedure and positive matrix factorisation allowed for the identification of six factors, corresponding to vehicular traffic, marine, long-range transport, various combustion, domestic solid fuel combustion and shipping traffic with estimated contributions to the measured PM2.5 mass of 23%, 14%, 13%, 11%, 5% and 1.5% respectively. Shipping traffic was found to contribute 18% of the measured particle number (20–600 nm mobility diameter), and thus may have important implications for human health considering the size and composition of ship exhaust particles. The positive matrix factorisation procedure enabled a more refined interpretation of the single particle results by providing source contributions to PM2.5 mass, while the single particle data enabled the identification of additional factors not possible with typical semi-continuous measurements, including local shipping traffic.

Improved recommendation of photo-taking locations using virtual ratings

We consider the task of collaborative recommendation of photo-taking locations. We use datasets of geotagged photos. We map their locations to a location grid using a geohashing algorithm, resulting in a user x location implicit feedback matrix. Our improvements relative to previous work are twofold. First, we create virtual ratings by spreading users' preferences to neighbouring grid locations. This makes the assumption that users have some preference for locations close to the ones in which they take their photos. These virtual ratings help overcome the discrete nature of the geohashing. Second, we normalize the implicit frequency-based ratings to a 1-5 scale using a method that has been found to be useful in music recommendation algorithms. We demonstrate the advantages of our approach with new experiments that show large increases in hit rate and related metrics.

Dunisky, Co. Cork: a refuge souterrain?

The townland of Dunisky (Dún Uisce, 'water fort', see Ó Murchadha 2001, 98) is situated about 2.5 miles to the SE of Macroom, Co. Cork (Ill. 1). It is also the Civil Parish of Dunisky, and is located in the Barony of West Muskerry. In extent, it contains over one thousand acres. It was first surveyed by the Ordnance Survey of Ireland in 1841-42. An earlier survey of the townland survives, drawn by the Cork cartographer, Patrick Aher. It is dated 1791, and shows sub-denominations.