The Misperception of Inflation by Irish Consumers

Perceptions and forecasts of inflation have the potential to impact on a range of economic outcomes. We reveal large, systematic overestimation of inflation by Irish consumers, which varies by social group. In contrast to previous work in this area, our models suggest the upward bias and the variation by social group should be considered substantially separate phenomena. We also offer evidence that inflation misperceptions are linked to attitudes and intentions with respect to consumption and saving and, hence, are likely to affect household decision-making. The findings therefore raise issues regarding the relationship between financial literacy and consumer behaviour.

Across the divide: Looking for the common ground of Hindustani

This article investigates some of the institutional and poetic practices around the idea of Hindustani in the period 1900–47. It charts the establishment of the Hindustani Academy in 1927, and explores some of its publishing activities as it attempted to make a positive institutional intervention in the Hindi-Urdu debate and cultural field more broadly. It then considers some aspects of poetic production in literary journals, including those associated with the Academy. Ultimately, it is an attempt to explore the grey areas that existed between Hindi/Hindu and Urdu/Muslim in the pre-Independence decades, and to make the case for studying the literature of both traditions simultaneously, along with emphasizing that attempts at compromise—including the perennially contested term ‘Hindustani’ itself—must be taken on their own terms

The Gift of Creativity: An Approach to a Theology of Technology

The argument of this thesis is that technological creativity is a gift from God to humanity through which we are invited corporately to share imaginatively in God’s creative activity in a manner appropriate to the nature and purposes of God. A demonstration of the ubiquity of creativity in aviation technology precedes an examination of theological approaches to technology, using the categories of Richard Niebuhr’s ‘Christ and Culture’, which reveals a lack of engagement with human creativity. This creativity, shown to be rooted in human imagination and a characteristic of all human beings, is part of the image of God in which human beings are created according to the Biblical accounts of creation in Genesis. The God who is imaged is shown to be loving and permissive in creation, inviting created partners to contribute, rather than prescriptive and violent. The Trinitarian character of God is also shown to be the origin of communal, and not just individual, human creativity. An exploration of the failure of technology to live up to this vision affirms that there is no inherent dark side to God’s creative gift to humanity as the problems come about through a mix of lack of knowledge, sin, and the will-to-power. An examination of a particular complex technological artefact, the city, leads to an argument that human technology is significant for the eternal purposes of God. Although a distorted understanding of the ‘image of God’, in which human beings become the domineering focus of creation, underlies the development of modern technology it is still the object of God’s redeeming and transforming power because of God’s love for and commitment to the whole creation. Technological creativity still has a place in God’s creation and will have a transformed place in God’s new creation

Musculoskeletal modeling and finite element analysis of the proximal juvenile femur

The influence of mechanical loading on bone modelling and remodelling has been, and still is the subject of many studies. It is widely accepted that the internal structure of long bones is orientated to the strains experienced throughout activities, and the morphometry of the bones are as a result of the loading. Although other influences play a role in bone development including, hormonal, nutritional and genetic. The internal structure is orientated in such a way that it transfers the loads experienced without being excessive in weight, providing an efficient weight bearing structure. Many researchers have analysed the adult femur but little work has been undertaken to understand femoral development in juveniles. Therefore the aim this work was to develop an understanding of the mechanical stresses and strains that the femur experiences during growth.The juvenile femur changes dramatically throughout growth. These changes occur from prenatal through to full maturity. The most notable include the ossification from a highly cartilaginous structure in the early years of development, to bone at ~18 years old, an increase in the length and angle of the neck, a change in the shaft torsion and a change in the bicondylar angle. Similarly, the development of movement patterns and locomotion in humans changes significantly throughout growth. Movement is restricted in utero, in neonates the movement begins to engage muscular activity, at 6 months a baby is usually able to sit upright; 9 months crawling begins; by 1 year old there is the ability to walk without support and at 4 years old an adult like gait pattern has developed. Full adult gait pattern has been documented to be achieved between 8-11 years old.In this work through gait analysis and musculoskeletal modelling the loads which the femur experiences at specific stages/ages of bipedal locomotion are analysed. Finite element analyses were then performed to develop an understanding of the stresses and strains of the proximal juvenile femur in relation to the attainment and development of bipedal gait. This was achieved by evaluating changes in these mechanical stresses and strains throughout different ages, relating them to the variations discovered in the gait patterns.Digitisation of the femora was performed on four specimens; prenatal, 3 years old, 7 years old and an adult. Following the scanning of the specimens in a micro CT scanner, some restoration to the damaged samples was required. Furthermore the dry samples were incomplete, and the models were needed to be modelled to accurately resemble fully intact femurs. The CT scans contained the full shaft however were missing the fully articulated proximal femur, due to the dry nature of the specimens the cartilages were absent. MRI scans which contained the femoral head data but were missing the full shaft were merged with the CT data to create a fully articulated femur for use in subsequent modelling.Gait analysis was performed on five children aged from 3-7 years old, with an average of five adults gait data used for comparison. The analysis showed that kinematic data was similar between all ages, however kinetic results revealed some differences. Ground reaction force in the 3 year old showed a higher heel strike compared to a higher toe off observed in adult during the gait cycle, indicating a lack of control in the 3 year old. Furthermore the 3 year old, compared to the other ages, had different values in joint moments. These joint moment results in particular played a role in the muscle forces produced from the musculoskeletal modelling.To obtain the muscle force data required for the FEA, musculoskeletal models were built. Testing the reliability of the musculoskeletal model was performed comparing the kinematic and kinetic data from the musculoskeletal modelling against the data obtained from the motion capture system. A good agreement was found between these data sets with the kinematics having the largest difference in the ankle plantar flexion of 8.6°. The kinetic results revealed almost exact matches. Further testing was attempted between the muscle force data and collected EMG. The collected EMG matched reported EMG in the literature and the onset and offset times of muscle activity corresponded well to muscle force peaks produced in the musculoskeletal model. Comparisons between the EMG and force through calculating the EMG as a force were inconclusive, although a degree of accuracy was shown but a more comprehensive method is required. It was concluded that with the accuracy of the kinematic and kinetic results the musculoskeletal modelling was accurate enough to give a true representation of physiological muscle forces to be modelled during FEA.Analysis of the musculoskeletal modelling results in the children revealed that the 3 year old had the highest significance between all the age groups. With the greatest significance in the hip flexors and abductors throughout the gait cycle. Joint reaction forces as a percentage of bodyweight were found to be much higher in the juvenile models. The adult model had a value of 265% bodyweight whereas the 3 year old showed a reaction force of 537% bodyweight. These differences observed in the musculoskeletal modelling had a direct effect on the FEA because the loads calculated here were applied to the finite element models to evaluate the effects that these would have on the stresses and strains during growth and development of the femur.FE models were built to represent a 3 year old, 7 year old and adult femur. Age specific loads calculated over 100% of a gait cycle, were applied to the models. The stress/strain analysis revealed some differences between the models but in general the areas exposed to high and low strain levels were similar. The similarities could suggest that each model was structurally adapted to the loads the femur regularly experiences. The thesis was successful in evaluating the stress and strain distribution apparent in the developing femur. However the work would be advanced by evaluating models from age ranges with a much more varied movement pattern i.e. crawling. This would increase an understanding of the structural optimisation of the femur

The Misperception of Inflation by Irish Consumers. ESRI WP261. October 2008

How people perceive and forecast inflation has the potential to impact on a range of economic outcomes. We reveal large, systematic overestimation of inflation by Irish consumers, which varies by social group. In contrast to previous work in this area, our models suggest the upward bias and the variation by social group should be considered substantially separate phenomena. We also offer evidence that inflation misperceptions are linked to attitudes and intentions with respect to consumption and saving and, hence, are likely to affect household decision-making. The findings therefore raise issues regarding the relationship between financial literacy and consumer behaviour

Worth a Try: A Statistical Analysis of Brian O’Driscoll’s Contribution to the Irish Rugby Team. ESRI WP483. June 2014

The unique characteristics of Brian O’Driscoll’s international rugby career provide a rare opportunity to obtain a measure of the impact of an individual player on the outcome of a team game. Generally, small samples and selection bias make such estimates unreliable. O’Driscoll, however, was an automatic selection for games against frontline opposition for 15 years, during which he missed a proportion of matches through injury. We model his impact on Ireland’s results, treating injury as a random event and controlling for home advantage and the strength of the opposition. We find that O’Driscoll’s presence was worth 6-7 points per game. We also find that he was particularly influential in close games, increasing the probability of victory by more than home advantage, both during the earlier and later parts of his career. Our models suggest that no other Irish player during the period made such a contribution, although they do indicate that some half-backs were similarly influential in close games

Using Metal-Organic Frameworks to Determine the Crystal Structures of Non-Crystalline Compounds via the Crystalline Sponge Method

The Crystalline Sponge Method has been expanded to the structural elucidation of hydrophilic and non-aromatic compounds through the study of new potential crystalline sponges and a range of novel host-guest inclusion complexes have been presented. First, it was important to reliably synthesise high quality single crystals of the original crystalline sponge {[(ZnI2)3(TPT)2].x(solvent)}n and its ZnBr2 and ZnCl2 variants. Then crystals of these metal-organic frameworks could be used in guest encapsulation experiments. Initial encapsulation experiments focused on improving on work performed previously in the Carmalt group on the encapsulation of 2,6-diphenylphenol; this was successful resulting in the structural elucidation of a fully refined crystal structure of 2,6-diphenylphenol. The crystalline sponge {[(ZnI2)3(TPT)2].x(solvent)}n and its ZnBr2 variant were used to obtain crystal structures of the liquid agrochemical active ingredients metalaxyl-M and S-metolachlor. The encapsulation of three model compounds with similar chemical fragments to metalaxyl-M and S-metolachlor were also studied allowing for the effect of guest size on the position of the pores the guests occupy to be investigated. Additionally, the effect of changing the ZnX2 (X = I or Br) nodes of the host metal-organic framework on the pore positions the guest molecules prefer to occupy and the effect of increasing the incubation temperature on guest inclusion was also studied. Further to this, studies were performed into the use of alternative metal-organic frameworks as crystalline sponges. This work was performed with the aim of mitigating the limitations of the original crystalline sponge and increasing the range of compounds that can have their structures elucidated via the crystalline sponge method. Several novel guest inclusion complexes have been presented using the metal-organic frameworks NOTT-125 and RUM-2. This demonstrated the ability of these frameworks to successfully order and elucidate the structures of guest compounds. It was observed that the framework RUM-2 was capable of elucidating the structures of both hydrophilic and hydrophobic structures, expanding the scope of the crystalline sponge method to a larger range of potent guest molecules. Additionally, an analysis of the host-guest interactions formed was performed when using RUM-2 as a crystalline sponge. It was observed that stronger covalent host-guest interactions were formed with guest molecules containing Lewis basic functional groups. These bonds were observed to allow for increased guest occupancy and improve guest ordering in comparison to that observed when solely non-covalent interactions were formed. Furthermore, experiments were performed to test the applicability of RUM-2 to the structural elucidation of agrochemical active ingredients. The successful structural elucidation of the herbicide active ingredient molinate in addition to the successful encapsulation of metalaxyl-M into {[(ZnI2)3(TPT)2].x(solvent)}n and its ZnBr2 variant demonstrated the potential of the crystalline sponge method in the structural elucidation of hard to crystallise compounds in the research and development of new agrochemical products