Defense or attack? Can soccer clubs help tackle social exclusion?

This paper examines soccer as a social and cultural phenomenon which is increasingly being adopted as an instrument for social change. The economic power of soccer in the UK, and in many other parts of the world, is apparent with the fame and wealth visited on players. But what is it about soccer that leads policy-makers to think that it can help change the life-courses of young people who may be excluded from education, work, health or suffer other forms of deprivation? Little literature has been found to explain how sport in general and soccer in particular is suited to countering issues of social inequality although the potential socialising effect of sport has been examined. Likewise evidence of effect from funding bodies seems to be limited although some examples of good practice exist. In this paper the theoretical and empirical basis of the assertion of soccer’s ‘transformative ability’ is challenged and the actual and potential role of soccer in social inclusion is assessed. A reflexive approach inspired by Bourdieu is adopted. This examines the structural, social reality of the soccer clubs involved in social inclusion projects but also looks at the individuals’ involvement in constructing this reality. A ‘participant objectivation’ approach is suggested and the initial results reported. Tentative conclusions suggest the emic and etic perspectives of participants and programme workers need to be taken into account. We argue that, although social exclusion is referred to, it is in fact only a set of correlated effects of the distribution of economic, social and cultural capital. An understanding of social exclusion and the potential role of soccer is, itself a form of cultural capital that will have different values to the various actors

A note on the Hybrid Soil Moisture Deficit Model v2.0

peer-reviewedThe Hybrid Soil Moisture Deficit (HSMD) model has been used for a wide range of applications, including modelling of grassland productivity and utilisation, assessment of agricultural management opportunities such as slurry spreading, predicting nutrient emissions to the environment and risks of pathogen transfer to water. In the decade since its publication, various ad hoc modifications have been developed and the recent publication of the Irish Soil Information System has facilitated improved assessment of the spatial soil moisture dynamics. In this short note, we formally present a new version of the model (HSMD2.0), which includes two new soil drainage classes, as well as an optional module to account for the topographic wetness index at any location. In addition, we present a new Indicative Soil Drainage Map for Ireland, based on the Irish Soil Classification system, developed as part of the Irish Soil Information System

Pathways for Nutrient Loss to Water; Slurry and Fertilizer Spreading

End of project reportThere are almost 150,000 farms in Ireland and these contribute substantial quantities of N and P to inland and coastal waters. Some of these nutrients are carried from wet soils by overland flow and by leaching from dry soils. Farm practice can reduce the loss from farms by judicious management of nutrients. Improvements are required to diminish export of nutrients without impairing operations on the farm. Literature regarding nutrient loss from agriculture was reviewed in this project and maps were prepared to predict best slurry spreading times around Ireland. Two further maps were prepared to show slurry storage requirement on farms

'Making New Theatre Together': Developing writers' and creating community in the first writers' group at the Royal Court and its legacy within the Young Writers' Programme

This article re-visits what should be regarded as the first attempt to bring a new generation of young playwrights to the Royal Court, through the Writers’ Group in 1958, and places the group’s inception, methodology and legacy within the contemporary context of the Young Writers’ Programme. The article draws on existing information on the first Writers’ Group and combines it with original insights from theatre practitioners who have worked closely with the Royal Court such as William Gaskill (Artistic Director 1965-1969), Ola Animashawun (Director of the Young Writers’ Programme 1998-2008), and Simon Stephens (Young Writers’ Programme Writers’ Tutor 2001-2005) to create a new analysis of the Royal Court’s long association with young writers

Improving the hierarchical classification of protein functions With swarm intelligence

This thesis investigates methods to improve the performance of hierarchical classification. In terms of this thesis hierarchical classification is a form of supervised learning, where the classes in a data set are arranged in a tree structure. As a base for our new methods we use the TDDC (top-down divide-and-conquer) approach for hierarchical classification, where each classifier is built only to discriminate between sibling classes. Firstly, we propose a swarm intelligence technique which varies the types of classifiers used at each divide within the TDDC tree. Our technique, PSO/ACO-CS (Particle Swarm Optimisation/Ant Colony Optimisation Classifier Selection), finds combinations of classifiers to be used in the TDDC tree using the global search ability of PSO/ACO. Secondly, we propose a technique that attempts to mitigate a major drawback of the TDDC approach. The drawback is that if at any point in the TDDC tree an example is misclassified it can never be correctly classified further down the TDDC tree. Our approach, PSO/ACO-RO (PSO/ACO-Recovery Optimisation) decides whether to redirect examples at a given classifier node using, again, the global search ability of PSO/ACO. Thirdly, we propose an ensemble based technique, HEHRS (Hierarchical Ensembles of Hierarchical Rule Sets), which attempts to boost the accuracy at each classifier node in the TDDC tree by using information from classifiers (rule sets) in the rest of that tree. We use Particle Swarm Optimisation to weight the individual rules within each ensemble. We evaluate these three new methods in hierarchical bioinformatics datasets that we have created for this research. These data sets represent the real world problem of protein function prediction. We find through extensive experimentation that the three proposed methods improve upon the baseline TDDC method to varying degrees. Overall the HEHRS and PSO/ACO- CS-RO approaches are most effective, although they are associated with a higher computational cost

Agriculture, meteorology and water quality in Ireland: a regional evaluation of pressures and pathways of nutrient loss to water

peer-reviewedThe main environmental impact of Irish agriculture on surface and ground water quality is the potential transfer of nutrients to water. Soil water dynamics mediate the transport of nutrients to water, and these dynamics in turn depend on agro-meteorological conditions, which show large variations between regions, seasons and years. In this paper we quantify and map the spatio-temporal variability of agro-meteorological factors that control nutrient pressures and pathways of nutrient loss. Subsequently, we evaluate their impact on the water quality of Irish rivers. For nitrogen, pressure and pathways factors coincide in eastern and southern areas, which is reflected in higher nitrate levels of the rivers in these regions. For phosphorus, pathway factors are most pronounced in north-western parts of the country. In south-eastern parts, high pressure factors result in reduced biological water quality. These regional differences require that farm practices be customised to reflect the local risk of nutrient loss to water. Where pathways for phosphorus loss are present almost year-round—as is the case in most of the north-western part of the country—build-up of pressures should be prevented, or ameliorated where already high. In south-eastern areas, spatio-temporal coincidence of nutrient pressures and pathways should be prevented, which poses challenges to grassland management