Writing westwards: medieval English literature and its early modern Irish audiences

Quite a few texts from England were translated into Irish in the fifteenth and early-sixteenth centuries. The number of these texts was significant enough to suggest that foreign material of this sort enjoyed something of a vogue in late-medieval Ireland. Translated texts include Mandeville’s Travels, Guy of Warwick, Bevis of Hampton, Fierabras and a selection of saints’ lives. Scholars have paid little attention to the origins and initial readerships of these texts, but still less research has been conducted into their afterlife in early modern Ireland. However, a strikingly high number of these works continued to be read and copied well into the seventeenth century and some, such as the Irish translations of Octavian and William of Palerne, only survive in manuscripts from this later period. This paper takes these translations as a test case to explore the ways in which a cross-period approach to such writing is applicable in Ireland, a country where the renaissance is generally considered to have taken little hold. It considers the extent to which Irish reception of this translated material shifts and evolves in the course of this turbulent period and whether the same factors that contributed to the continued demand for a range of similar texts in England into the seventeenth century are also discernible in the Irish context.

An investigation into factors affecting the occupational choices of nominated farm heirs in Ireland

The resilience of family farming is an important feature of the structure of the farming industry in many countries, due largely to the 'smooth' succession of farms from one generation to the next. The stability of this structure is now threatened by the widening gap between the income expected from farming when compared with non-farming occupations in an economy like Ireland, operating at almost full employment. Nominated farm heirs are increasingly unlikely to choose full-time farming as their preferred occupation. To identify the factors that affect this occupational choice, a multinomial logit model is developed and applied to Irish data to examine the farm, economic and personal characteristics that influence a nominated heir's decision to enter farming as opposed to some non-farming occupation. The results show a significant negative relationship between higher education and the choice of full-time farming as an occupation. The interdependence between education and occupational choices is further explored using a bivariate probit model. The main findings are: the occupational choice and the decision to continue with higher education are made jointly; the nominated heirs on more profitable farms are less likely to pursue tertiary education and therefore more likely to enter full-time farming. The model developed is sufficiently general for studying the phenomenon of succession on farms.

Primary music education: the misrepresentation of the ideals of curricula in research

The author starts from a historical viewpoint to suggest that, at primary level, we have tended to perpetuate a nineteenth-century notion of music education. This is evident in the selection and organisation of musical content in curriculum documents, the scope of the teacher-pupil transaction implicit in these and the assumptions about music education which underpin research on practice conducted at official policy level. In light of the introduction of the 1999 Revised Primary School Curriculum, with its change in emphasis, she notes that it is timely to reconsider the situation. Central to this is the need to challenge the notion of music as a set of delineated skills, to explore the relationship between the primary teacher and music, and to move towards a notion of research which acknowledges the richness of multiple interpretations teachers bring to the curriculum.

The development of convergence and accommodation

Aim: To review current literature on the development of convergence and accommodation. The accommodation and vergence systems provide the foundation upon which bifoveal binocular single vision develops. Deviations from their normal development not only are implicated in the aetiology of convergence anomalies, accommodative anomalies and strabismus, but may also be implicated in failure of the emmetropisation process. Method: This review considers the problems of researching the development of accommodation and vergence in infants and how infant research has had to differ from adult methods. It then reviews and discusses the implications of current research into the development of both systems and their linkages. Results: Vergence and accommodation develop rapidly in the first months of life, with accommodation changing from relatively fixed myopic focus in the neonatal period to adult-like responses by 4 months of age. Vergence develops gradually and becomes more accurate after 4 months of age, but has been demonstrated in infants well before the age that binocular disparity detection mechanisms are thought to develop. Hypotheses for this early vergence mechanism are discussed. The relationship between accommodation and vergence shows much more variability in infants than adult literature has found, but this apparent adult/infant difference may be partly attributed to methodological differences rather than maturational change alone. Conclusions: Variability and flexibility characterise infant responses. This variability may enable infants to develop a flexible and robust binocular system for later life. Studies of infant visual cue use may give clues to the aetiology of strabismus and refractive error.

The hanging man: death, indeterminacy and the event

This article discusses approaches to the interpretation and analysis an event that is poised between reality and performance. It focuses upon a real event witnessed by the author while driving out of Los Angeles, USA. A body hanging on a rope from a bridge some 25/30 feet above the freeway held up the traffic. The status of the body was unclear. Was it the corpse of a dead human being or a stuffed dummy, a simulation of a death? Was it is tragic accident or suicide or was it a stunt, a protest or a performance? Whether a real body or not, it was an event: it drew an audience, it took place in a defined public space bound by time and it disrupted everyday normality and the familiar. The article debates how approaches to performance can engage with a shocking event, such as the Hanging Man, and the frameworks of interpretation that can be brought to bear on it. The analysis takes account of the function of memory in reconstructing the event, and the paradigms of cultural knowledge that offered themselves as parallels, comparators or distinctions against which the experience could be measured, such as the incidents of self-immolation related to demonstrations against the Vietnam War, the protest by the Irish Hunger Strikers and the visual impact of Anthony Gormley’s 2007 work, 'Event Horizon'. Theoretical frameworks deriving from analytical approaches to performance, media representation and ethical dilemmas are evaluated as means to assimilate an indeterminate and challenging event, and the notion of what an ‘event’ may be is itself addressed.

An overview of the current status of research into adopting high levels of renewables in Ireland

This paper provides an overview of the reduction targets that Ireland has set in the context of decarbonising their electricity generation through the use of renewables. The main challenges associated with integrating high levels (>20% of installed capacity) of non-dispatchable renewable generation are identified. The rising complexity of the challenge as renewable penetration levels increase is highlighted. A list of relevant research questions is then proposed, and an overview is given into the previous work that has gone into answering some of them. In particular, studies into the Irish energy market are identified, the current knowledge gap is described, and areas of necessary future research are suggested

Differences in postprandial lipaemic response between Northern and Southern Europeans

Postprandial lipaemic responses to two test meals were investigated in 30 Northern (15 British and 15 Irish), and 30 Southern (Greeks from Crete) healthy male Europeans. The meals were a saturated fatty acid (SFA) meal, which resembled the fatty acid composition of an average UK diet, and a monounsaturated fatty acid (MUFA) meal in which the fat consisted of olive oil. Habitual diets of the two groups differed, with higher total fat, (P < 0.03) and MUFA (P < 0.0001) and lower polyunsaturated fatty acid (PUFA) (P < 0.0001) intakes in Southern than Northern Europeans. Levels of total MUFA (P < 0.02) and oleic acid (P < 0.004) were also higher in adipose tissue of Southern in comparison to Northern Europeans. In both European groups there were no significant differences in postprandial triglyceride response between the two meal types, SFA or MUFA. However, Northern and Southern Europeans showed significant differences in their patterns of postprandial response in plasma triglycerides (P < 0.0001), apolipoprotein B-48 (P < 0.0001), NEFA (P < 0.0001), insulin (P < 0.0007), and factor VII activity (P-0.03). In the case of NEFA, areas under the response curve were higher following the SFA than the MUFA meal for both groups, (P < 0.003) and were greater in Southern than Northern Europeans (P < 0.002) and apo B-48 responses were lower (P < 0.005). Some of these differences may reflect differences in fasting levels since fasting apolipoprotein B-48 levels were lower (P < 0.01) and fasting NEFA (P < 0.02) and insulin (P < 0.005) were higher in the Southern than in the Northern Europeans. In addition, 9 h postprandial post-heparin lipoprotein lipase activity was lower in the Southern than in the Northern Europeans (P < 0.0006). This is the first report of differences in postprandial lipid, factor VII and insulin responses in Southern and Northern Europeans which may be of importance in explaining the different susceptibilities of these two populations to risk of coronary artery disease.