Evaluation of the KA24 (Knowledge Access 24) service for health and social care staff in London and the South-East of England. Part 1: Quantitative

Cumbers, B., Urquhart, C. & Durbin, J. (2006). Evaluation of the KA24 (Knowledge Access 24) service for health and social care staff in London and the South-East of England. Part 1: Quantitative. Health Information and Libraries Journal, 23(2), 133-139 Sponsorship: KA24 - NHS Trusts, London

ROSSI: Emergence of communication in Robots through Sensorimotor and Social Interaction

ROSSI: Emergence of communication in Robots through Sensorimotor and Social Interaction, T. Ziemke, A. Borghi, F. Anelli, C. Gianelli, F. Binkovski, G. Buccino, V. Gallese, M. Huelse, M. Lee, R. Nicoletti, D. Parisi, L. Riggio, A. Tessari, E. Sahin, International Conference on Cognitive Systems (CogSys 2008), University of Karlsruhe, Karlsruhe, Germany, 2008 Sponsorship: EU-FP7

Constructing Enemies: 'Islamic Terrorism' in Political and Academic Discourse

Jackson, Richard, (2007) 'Constructing Enemies: 'Islamic Terrorism' in Political and Academic Discourse', Government and Opposition, 42(3) pp.394-426 RAE2008

Contraction/expansion flows: The pressure drop and related issues

Binding, David; Phillips, P.M.; Philips, T.N., (2006) 'Contraction/expansion flows: The pressure drop and related issues', Journal of Non-Newtonian Fluid Mechanics 137 pp.31-38 RAE2008

Handedness and social anxiety: using Bryden's research as a catalyst to explore the influence of familial sinistrality and degree of handedness

Phil Bryden's work has impacted on many areas of laterality, including degree and measurement of hand preference, as well as influences of familial sinistrality (FS). For example, Bryden[(1977). Measuring handedness with questionnaires. Neuropsychologia, 15, 617–624] is a well-cited and influential paper that remains relevant to this day. Inspired by this we extended our analysis of the relationship between handedness and anxiety in a number of ways. We used familial handedness and strength of handedness to examine their potential influences on anxiety, and extended our research by exploring their relationship to social anxiety, using the Social Phobia Inventory (SPIN). Inconsistent left-handers (ILH) were found to be more socially anxious. In all categories of SPIN except avoidance, ILH were significantly more anxious than consistent right- and left-handers. There were FS differences between ILH with a first degree left-handed relative (FS+) compared to ILH with no first degree left-handed relative (FS−) on all categories of anxiety scores. Within FS+ participants, ILH had significantly higher anxiety scores, compared with consistent handers across all categories. This suggests that ILH's social anxiety may be influenced by a close left-handed relative. Inspired by examining Bryden's work for this special issue, we will continue to add both strength of preference and familial handedness to our work.

‘Complementary & alternative medicine’ (CAM): ethical and policy issues

Editorial for Bioethics 2016. 30:(2)

Działalność polityczno-społeczna prof. Stefana Dąbrowskiego (1877-1947)

Wydział Historyczny: Instytut Historii

Christian missions and social progress : a sociological study of foreign missions (vol. 1)

http://www.archive.org/details/socialprogress00dennuoft/

Christian missions and social progress : a sociological study of foreign missions (vol. 3)

http://www.archive.org/details/socialprogress03dennuoft/

Christian missions and social progress : a sociological study of foreign missions (vol. 2)

http://www.archive.org/details/socialprogress02dennuoft/

Edmund Burke and the heritage of oral culture

The dissertation proposes that one of the more fruitful ways of interpreting Burke's work is to evaluate him as an oral performer rather than a literary practitioner and it argues that in his voice can be heard the modulations of the genres and conventions of oral composition of eighteenth-century Gaelic Ireland. The first chapter situates Burke in the milieu of the Gaelic landed class of eighteenth-century Ireland. The next chapter examines how the rich oral culture of the Munster Gaelic gentry, where Burke spent his childhood days, was to provide a lasting influence on the form and content of Burke's work. His speeches on the British constitution are read in the context of the historical and literary culture of the Jacobites, specifically the speculum principis, Párliament na mBán. The third chapter surveys the tradition of Anglo-Irish theoretical writings on oratory and discusses how Burke is aligned with this school. The focus is on how Burke's thought and practice, his 'idioms', might be understood as being mediated through the criterion of orality rather than literature. The remaining chapters discuss Burke's politics and performance in the light of Gaelic cultural practices such as the rituals of the courts of poetry, the Warrant Poems or Barántas; the performance of funeral laments and elegies, Caoineadh, the laments for the fallen nobility, Marbhna na daoine uaisle, the satires and the political vision allegories of Munster, Aislingí na Mumhan; to show how they provide us with a remarkable context for discussing Burke's poetical-political performance. In hearing Burke's voice through the body of Gaelic culture our understanding of Burke's position in the wider world of the eighteenth century (and hence his meaning) is profoundly affected.

Acoustic behaviour, ecology and social structure of bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus, Montagu 1821) in the North Atlantic

Communication is important for social and other behavioural interactions in most marine mammal species. The bottlenose dolphin (Tursiops truncatus, Montagu, 1821) is a highly social species that use whistles as communication calls to express identity and to initiate and maintain contact between socially interactive individuals. In this thesis, the degree of variability in whistle behaviour and whistle characteristics was examined between different habitats on a range of spatial scales. The whistle characteristics that best discriminated between different communities were investigated, along with exploration of whistle variation in relation to habitat type, levels of social interaction and relatedness. Finally, the use and variability of individually distinctive calls (signature whistles) within and between Irish and US waters were also examined. Relatively high levels of whistle variation were found within a genetically and socially isolated population of dolphins in the Shannon Estuary, reflecting the need for individual identification and distinctive whistles in a population with long term site fidelity and high levels of social cohesion. Variation between reproductively separate communities in Irish waters was relatively small except between animals in inshore compared with continental shelf waters. The greatest differences in whistle structure overall were evident between dolphins using inshore and offshore US waters, likely reflecting social isolation of the two distinct ecotypes that occur in these waters but also variation in behaviour or habitat conditions. Variation found among inshore communities in US waters reflected similarities in habitat use and levels of social interaction. These findings suggest that vocal variation is socially mediated, behaviourally maintained and dependent on levels of social contact between individuals. The findings contribute to our understanding of the interaction of factors influencing vocalisation behaviour in this behaviourally complex and ecologically plastic species.

Thomas Davis's education policies: theory and practice

This thesis explores the education policies of Thomas Davis. On the eve of the Great Famine Ireland was economically impoverished and politically dependent. The Irish people had a subservient mentality, were mainly uneducated and were unaware of their potential. He believed that education would develop a self-reliant, self-sufficient people; it would create a new generation of leaders and citizens necessary to transform Ireland into a prosperous, independent nation. This thesis explores his education philosophy which was political in orientation; he called for reform of university education so that it would educate leaders who were knowledgeable, patriotic and responsible. He formulated a curriculum which consisted of knowledge that would have direct use and application in public life; his curriculum included moral philosophy, oratory, philological studies and history. His contribution to the debate on the Queens Colleges bill, 1845, is explored including his public disagreement with Daniel O’Connell on the principle of multi-denominational education. This work also examines his policies on learning methodologies and teaching methods. It provides details of his thoughts on learning by experience, by observation, book learning and learning in the home. It focuses on the deficiencies evident in the system of teaching and learning that operated in Trinity College Dublin and it provides an analysis of his preferred method of instruction: Lyceum teaching. This thesis also explores his national curriculum in history and Irish culture which was designed to forge a sense of national identity, to win support for repeal and to develop the principle of nationality. He formulated a national curriculum to counteract the absence of national knowledge in the state schools, to provide the people with a positive self-image and ultimately to empower them to reclaim Ireland and to develop it. Davis knew the power of education and he used it as an instrument of political and social change.

Exploring the Zionist evolution of Robert Briscoe: History and memory

Robert Briscoe was the Dublin born son of Lithuanian and German-Jewish immigrants. As a young man he joined Sinn Féin and was an important figure in the War of Independence due to a role as one of the IRA’s main gun-procuring agents. He took the anti-Treaty side during an internecine Civil War, mainly due to the influence of Eamon de Valera and retained a filial devotion towards him for the rest of his life. In 1926 he was a founding member of Fianna Fáil, de Valera’s breakaway republican party, which would dominate twentieth-century Irish politics. He was first elected as a Fianna Fáil T.D. (Teachta Dála, Deputy to the Dáil) in 1927, and successfully defended his seat eleven times becoming the first Jewish Lord Mayor of Dublin in 1956, an honour that was repeated in 1961. On this basis alone, it can be argued that Briscoe was a significant presence in an embryonic Irish political culture; however, when his role in the 1930s Jewish immigration endeavor is acknowledged, it is clear that he played a unique part in one of the most contentious political and social discourses of the pre-war years. This was reinforced when Briscoe embraced Zionism in a belated realisation that the survival of his European co-religionists could only be guaranteed if an independent Jewish state existed. This information is to a certain degree public knowledge; however, the full extent of his involvement as an immigration advocate for potential Jewish refugees, and the seniority he achieved in the New Zionist Organisation (Revisionists) has not been fully recognised. This is partly explicable because researchers have based their assessment of Briscoe on an incomplete political archive in the National Library of Ireland (NLI). The vast majority of documentation pertaining to his involvement in the immigration endeavor has not been available to scholars and remains the private property of Robert Briscoe’s son, Ben Briscoe. The lack of immigration files in the NLI was reinforced by the fact that information about Briscoe’s Revisionist engagement was donated to the Jabotinsky Institute in Tel Aviv and can only be accessed physically by visiting Israel. Therefore, even though these twin endeavors have been commented on by a number of academics, their assessments have tended to be based on an incomplete archive, which was supplemented by Briscoe’s autobiographical memoir published in 1958. This study will attempt to fill in the missing gaps in Briscoe’s complex political narrative by incorporating the rarely used private papers of Robert Briscoe, and the difficult to access Briscoe files in Tel Aviv. This undertaking was only possible when Mr.Ben Briscoe graciously granted me full and unrestricted access to his father’s papers, and after a month-long research trip to the Jabotinsky Institute in Tel Aviv. Access to this rarely used documentation facilitated a holistic examination of Briscoe’s complex and multifaceted political reality. It revealed the full extent of Briscoe’s political and social evolution as the Nazi instigated Jewish emigration crisis reached catastrophic proportions. He was by turn Fianna Fáil nationalist, Jewish immigration advocate and senior Revisionist actor on a global stage. The study will examine the contrasting political and social forces that initiated each stage of Briscoe’s Zionist awakening, and in the process will fill a major gap in Irish-Jewish historiography by revealing the full extent of his Revisionist engagement.

A craniometric study of population dynamics and social organisation in the European upper Palaeolithic and Mesolithic

The purpose of this study is to explore aspects of social organisation during the Upper Palaeolithic and Mesolithic periods using craniometric data. Different hypotheses were tested using geometric morphometrics, alongside traditional craniometric data. The clustering of individuals from the same site, as well as a correspondence to an isolation-by-distance model—particular in the Mesolithic samples—points to population structure within these groups. Moreover, discontinuities in cranial traits between the early Upper Palaeolithic and later periods could suggest that the Last Glacial Maximum had a disruptive effect on populations in Europe. Differences in social organisation can often result from cultural norms regarding post-marital residence. Such differences can be tested by comparing cranial data to that of geographic information. Greater variation in male cranial traits relative to females, after controlling for location, suggests that the overall pattern of residence during the Upper Palaeolithic and Mesolithic was one of matrilocality. It has been suggested that coastal occupation was density dependent and these populations show a greater degree of sedentism than their inland counterparts. Moreover, it has been proposed that coastal areas were not continuously occupied until the Late Pleistocene due to spatial restrictions that would adversely affect reproductive opportunities. This study corroborates the pattern seen in cranial traits corresponded with that of a more sedentary population. The results are consistent with the hypothesis that coastal populations are more sedentary than inland populations during these periods. This study adds new information regarding the social dynamics of prehistoric populations in Europe and sheds light on some of the conditions that may have paved the way for the transition to agriculture