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This article provides a comparative examination of teachers’ experiences of both participating in Catholic teacher education programmes and teaching within Catholic schools in the Republic of Ireland and the United States. This mixed-methods study consisted of surveys and interviews with 22 teachers who are graduates of both Irish and US teacher education programmes and have taught in Catholic schools in both countries. This distinct cohort of Irish Catholic educators reveals how faith and Catholic identity are experienced in two distinct education systems that share a common mission. The research underscores how context powerfully shapes the lived experience of teachers in both Catholic teacher education programmes and in Catholic schools, and it highlights implications for those responsible for Catholic teacher education programmes and also for the leaders of Catholic schools. The extent to which members of a school community explicitly identify and choose to embody the Catholic identity greatly shapes outcomes.

This chapter examines how the Republic of Ireland’s established parties maintained their predominance in the face of dramatic social, economic, cultural and political change in recent decades. The underlying cleavage structure in Ireland, as well as the political value system and the issues dimensions relevant for elections, has experienced sharp change. Dramatic shifts have also occurred in the demographic composition of the electorate as Ireland has transitioned from one of the poorest to one of the wealthiest European countries in less than a generation. Additionally, changes in Ireland’s political institutions have altered how politics in Ireland is conducted. Despite these potential sources of change occurring in recent decades, the party system has outwardly experienced more stability than change in electoral outcomes. The chapter demonstrates how party leaders have taken advantage of conditions created as a result of partition and the founding period to sustain one of Europe’s most stable political systems.

The catchall party remains a useful concept despite the lack of a widely agreed definition or list of parties. This article suggests defining catchall parties based on how they act strategically. Although catchall parties act strategically on both the organisational and ideological dimensions, this article concentrates on three key ideological features: catchall parties are ideologically centrist, dispersed and flexible over time. Relying on original surveys in the Republic of Ireland, which interviewed two‐thirds of parliamentarians, it is confirmed that Ireland's ‘catchall’ and ‘programmatic’ parties clearly differ in terms of how they compete ideologically. Ireland's catchall parties employ all three identified strategies. Smaller, more programmatic parties are consistent over time, non‐centrist and extremely ideologically coherent on core programmatic issues. The competition between catchall parties and ideological populist parties is a pressing issue, and the Irish case provides new theoretical insights and empirical evidence to understand these party types.

Attributing the label ‘franchise’ to parties that possess certain organisational characteristics, such as centralized authority at the national level combined with substantial autonomy at the local level, has become increasingly common. These franchise characteristics have been identified in parties in a wide variety of country cases, in party systems as diverse as those of Canada, Australia, Israel and Ireland. Drawing upon evidence from three original parliamentary surveys in the Republic of Ireland, this article seeks to expand our understanding of franchise parties by focusing on the ideological behaviour adopted by franchise parties at both the national and the candidate levels. An analysis of the Irish case suggests that, in addition to previously studied organisational characteristics, candidates from franchise parties enjoy an unusual degree of flexibility to vary their policy positions.

Quasar outflows have long been recognized as potential contributors to the co-evolution between supermassive black holes (SMBHs) and their host galaxies. The role of outflows in AGN feedback processes can be better understood by placing observational constraints on wind locations and kinetic energies. We utilize broad absorption line (BAL) variability to investigate the properties of a sample of 71 BAL quasars with P$\thinspace$V broad absorption. The presence of P$\thinspace$V BALs indicates that other BALs like C$\thinspace$IV are saturated, such that variability in those lines favours clouds crossing the line of sight. We use these constraints with measurements of BAL variability to estimate outflow locations and energetics. Our data set consists of multiple-epoch spectra from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey and MDM Observatory. We detect significant (4$��$) BAL variations from 10 quasars in our sample over rest frame time-scales between < 0.2-3.8 yr. Our derived distances for the 10 variable outflows are nominally < 1-10 pc from the SMBH using the transverse-motion scenario, and < 100-1000 pc from the central source using ionization-change considerations. These distances, in combination with the estimated high outflow column densities (i.e. $N_{\textrm{H}}$ > 10$^{22}$ cm$^{-2}$), yield outflow kinetic luminosities between ~ 0.001-1 times the bolometric luminosity of the quasar, indicating that many absorber energies within our sample are viable for AGN feedback., 19 pages, 3 figures, 4 tables, 1 supplementary figure, accepted to MNRAS

‘Remember also that it is nearly impossible to translate the words “Fianna Fail”,’ Mr De Valera said with a smile. ‘There is some advantage in that also.’ (McInerney, 1976)Fianna Fail, for many, is...

For over eight decades, Fianna Fail demonstrated a remarkable capacity for successful adaptation to cope with a turbulent and increasingly uncertain electoral environment. Unlike many dominant part...

Schattschneider famously articulated that ‘Political parties created modern democracy and modern democracy is unthinkable save in terms of parties.’ Despite the challenges political parties face in...

This article argues that Ireland's major party elites enjoy an unusual degree of ideological flexibility, which in turn provides the parties with an uncommon capacity to adjust programmatically when changing electoral opportunities, or challenges, present themselves. Evidence from two originally designed parliamentary surveys, conducted in sharply different contexts in the 2007 and 2011 elections, supports this finding. A closer examination of individual TDs’ policy positions reveals that TDs possess considerable flexibility to adapt their policy appeals. Although parties may appear programmatically similar at the aggregate level, the high degree of internal ideological heterogeneity reinforces that the autonomy individual TDs have to alter their positions within their local electoral context. These findings point to a conclusion that the presence of a high degree of ideological flexibility, especially at the level of individual TDs, not policy positions in themselves, is critical for understandin...

As astronomers increasingly exploit the information available in the time domain, spectroscopic variability in particular opens broad new channels of investigation. Here we describe the selection algorithms for all targets intended for repeat spectroscopy in the Time Domain Spectroscopic Survey (TDSS), part of the extended Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey within the Sloan Digital Sky Survey-IV. Also discussed are the scientific rationale and technical constraints leading to these target selections. The TDSS includes a large "Repeat Quasar Spectroscopy" (RQS) program delivering ~13,000 repeat spectra of confirmed SDSS quasars, and several smaller "Few-Epoch Spectroscopy" (FES) programs targeting specific classes of quasars as well as stars. The RQS program aims to provide a large and diverse quasar data set for studying variations in quasar spectra on timescales of years, a comparison sample for the FES quasar programs, and opportunity for discovering rare, serendipitous events. The FES programs cover a wide variety of phenomena in both quasars and stars. Quasar FES programs target broad absorption line quasars, high signal-to-noise ratio normal broad line quasars, quasars with double-peaked or very asymmetric broad emission line profiles, binary supermassive black hole candidates, and the most photometrically variable quasars. Strongly variable stars are also targeted for repeat spectroscopy, encompassing many types of eclipsing binary systems, and classical pulsators like RR Lyrae. Other stellar FES programs allow spectroscopic variability studies of active ultracool dwarf stars, dwarf carbon stars, and white dwarf/M dwarf spectroscopic binaries. We present example TDSS spectra and describe anticipated sample sizes and results., 26 pages, 11 figures, replaced with accepted version to AJ

We investigate broad absorption line (BAL) disappearance and emergence using a 470 BAL-quasar sample over < 0.10-5.25 rest-frame years with at least three spectroscopic epochs for each quasar from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. We identify 14 disappearing BALs over < 1.73-4.62 rest-frame years and 18 emerging BALs over < 1.46-3.66 rest-frame years associated with the CIV 1548,1550 and/or SiIV 1393,1402 doublets, and report on their variability behavior. BAL quasars in our dataset exhibit disappearing/emerging CIV BALs at a rate of 2.3 and 3.0 per cent, respectively, and the frequency for BAL to non-BAL quasar transitions is 1.7 per cent. We detect four re-emerging BALs over < 3.88 rest-frame years on average and three re-disappearing BALs over < 4.15 rest-frame years on average, the first reported cases of these types. We infer BAL lifetimes along the line of sight to be nominally < 100-1000 yr using disappearing CIV BALs in our sample. Interpretations of (re-)emerging and (re-)disappearing BALs reveal evidence that collectively supports both transverse-motion and ionization-change scenarios to explain BAL variations. We constrain a nominal CIV/SiIV BAL outflow location of < 100 pc from the central source and a radial size of > 1x10^-7 pc (0.02 au) using the ionization-change scenario, and constrain a nominal outflow location of < 0.5 pc and a transverse size of ~0.01 pc using the transverse-motion scenario. Our findings are consistent with previous work, and provide evidence in support of BALs tracing compact flow geometries with small filling factors., 25 pages, 9 figures, 5 tables, accepted to MNRAS, please visit MNRAS or contact W.N. Brandt to access supplementary material

Ireland represents a useful case for studying political parties and their strategies as independent variables. In a context of unprecedented social and economic change, party leaders have demonstrated unusual organisational creativity in adopting strategies to manage the political consequences of these changes. While the potential for new issues, cleavages and parties surely exists in this changing environment, and while elections have been hotly contested in the recent era of increasing floating voters and declining party membership, the traditional political parties have maintained their overall electoral dominance through it all. They have done so by systematically removing potentially contentious issues from the domain of electoral politics. This article is about political agency, focusing on the strategic choices of political party entrepreneurs. The current Irish party literature’s emphasis on electoral outcomes fails to appreciate sufficiently the various ways parties adopt strategies alon...

Hierarchical Decision Modeling (HDM) has been developed as a decision making tool across multiple industries in a wide variety of applications. This paper presents the development of HDM as a tool to be used as an asset prioritization method in the municipal wastewater industry while providing a manual for other agencies to develop a model customized to their particular systems’ needs and capabilities. By converting a rudimentary risk-impact matrix, integrating expert feedback across two teams and a manager, and following the guidance of the established problem statement, an effective asset prioritization tool was developed as a means to accurately and consistently score and rank assets according to their priority for consideration for repair or replacement. Following development, a simulation was performed to validate the effectiveness of the tool by comparing it against the experience and expertise of the current decision maker.

The objective of this study is to explore the current trends and the future adoption of products, technologies, and resources in the EHR industry (electronic health records) by means of a detailed technological roadmap. Demographics, governmental healthcare reforms, and mobile health are considered as the primary market drivers and the various T-plan analysis tools such as Porter’s five forces model, SWOT analysis, quality function deployment (QFD), and S-curve analysis were employed for the purposes of this study. The result of this paper is a technology roadmap for the “complete EHR” system by the end of the next 4-year timeline. The paper is based on data collected from sources that have been subject matter experts in the relative fields for many years. This report intends to illustrate the roadmapping process by bringing the cognitive thinking onto a swim lane chart to direct the critical path for an organization.

The physical properties and dynamical behavior of Broad Absorption Line (BAL) outflows are crucial themes in understanding the connections between galactic centers and their hosts. FeLoBALs (identified with the presence of low-ionization Fe II BALs) are a peculiar class of quasar outflows that constitute approximately 1% of the BAL population. With their large column densities and apparent outflow kinetic luminosities, FeLoBALs appear to be exceptionally powerful and are strong candidates for feedback in galaxy evolution. We conducted variability studies of 12 FeLoBAL quasars with emission redshifts between 0.69 and 1.93, spanning both weekly and multi-year timescales in the quasar's rest frame. We detected absorption-line variability from low-ionization species (Fe II, Mg II) in four of our objects, with which we established a representative upper limit for the distance of the absorber from the supermassive black hole (SMBH) to be approximately 20 parsecs. Our goals are to understand the mechanisms producing the variability (e.g. ionization changes or gas traversing our line of sight) and place new constraints on the locations, structure, and kinetic energies of the outflows., Comment: 2 pages, no figures, to be published in conference proceedings for IAU Symposium No. 304: Multiwavelength AGN Surveys and Studies