CORA
Cork Open Research Archive (CORA) is UCC’s Open Access institutional repository which enables UCC researchers to make their research outputs freely available and accessible.
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Innovating through adversity
(Cork Cultural Companions, 2021) Bantry White, Eleanor; Desmond, Elaine; Government of Ireland
This research provides an evaluation of two programmes offered as part of the COVIDProofing Cultural Companions initiative within Cork Cultural Companions, which began in January, 2020. Cultural Companions aims to provide increased opportunities for older people wishing to engage with Ireland’s vibrant arts and culture scene (and arts organisations wishing to expand their audiences) but who have no one to go with. The scheme creates local and voluntary networks of older people interested in the arts and culture in order that they may accompany each other to arts events. It seeks to connect people with the arts and with other people and recognises that staying connected is good for physical and mental wellbeing.
The start of Cultural Companions coincided with the start of another kind – namely, the ‘new normal’ associated with COVID-19. The pandemic directly impacted upon the two central pillars of the new initiative – all live entertainment was cancelled, and the target age cohort of the initiative was obliged to self-isolate. COVID-Proofing Cultural Companions was established with the aim of exploring the Cultural Companions’ response to this situation – which involved seeking funding for and organising their own online events.
This report begins with an overview of ageing in Ireland and identifies issues important to the goals and activities of Cork Cultural Companions. It then examines the experience of five participants and four facilitators and organisers of two of these events – Tea and Ballet and Clay Modelling. Through participant observation and semi-structured interviews, the research explores the contribution of the arts to resilience in times of crisis. Participants reported how the events allowed them to feel a sense of connection, control, freedom, and escape in an oppressive context marked by restriction, fear, and uncertainty.
The study highlights how the arts and the social are mutually reinforcing. Participants in the Clay Modelling, involved in online learning of the method in their homes, noted the loss of the social aspect of being able to check with a teacher or others in a class. The Tea and Ballet, on the other hand, did not involve participants in an activity. Instead, it featured the history of the ballet, Giselle, as presented by a former ballerina from her home. The evaluation of the event highlighted how the social connection, although online, was enriched through the sharing of a love of ballet.
The evaluation provides support for the ethos of the Cultural Companions initiative – namely that a meaningful shared experience of a cultural event translates into more meaningful social connections. The evaluation of the Clay Modelling highlights, however, that events are not equal in this regard with those requiring the development of a practical skill more likely to work better in person than online. Nonetheless, the study illustrates how the online events served as a stepping-stone, attracting members to the activity who would not otherwise have attended in person due to the lack of confidence that comes with social isolation. In some cases, the research highlights how the online event led participants to seek out the experience in person.
The study explores how the events were a positive experience for organisers and facilitators, as well as participants. They emerged through creative collaboration between a diverse network of community supports which Cultural Companions, as an initiative, was able to bring together. This emphasised the shared belief of the organisations and individuals involved that the arts had something significant to offer in a time of crisis, particularly for an age cohort who were designated as high risk within it.
While the focus of Cultural Companions is to address social isolation, the evaluation illustrates that not all the participants who joined Cultural Companions identified as being socially isolated. This suggests the potential for broadening engagement in terms of reaching those who would specifically identify as being socially isolated in line with the programme’s central aim. It would also be beneficial to identify strategies to engage men in the events and programmes. Building up a picture of the needs and interests of members through a database would support planning and ensure events remain relevant as membership expands. Involving members within the design of events and programmes may also improve ownership and
engagement.
Facilitating events both online and in-person is responsive to the diverse needs of older adults, some who prefer to join online. The evaluation illustrates the importance of careful facilitation to allow everyone a chance to speak, whether in online or live events. Supporting access to technology that lends itself well to participation also needs to be maintained. The evaluation suggests a need to extend the reach of the initiative so that it includes all those who would benefit from it, thus ensuring that Cork Cultural Companions continues to make a valuable contribution to the wellbeing of older adults across Cork city and county.
Dual tasking interferes with dynamic balance in young and old healthy adults
(IOS Press, 2021-01-11) Sulaiman, Amal Al-Shaikh; Kelly, Marie; O’Connor, Mairead; Bamiou, Doris-Eva; Pavlou, Marousa; Ménière’s Society, UK
BACKGROUND: Functional mobility requires an ability to adapt to environmental factors together with an ability to execute a secondary task simultaneously while walking. A complex dual-tasking gait test may provide an indication of functional ability and falls risk among community-dwelling older adults. PURPOSE: The aim of this cross-sectional study is to investigate age-related differences in dual-tasking ability and to evaluate whether dual-tasking ability is related to executive function. METHODS: Forty-one community-dwelling healthy older and forty-one younger adults completed a dual-tasking assessment in which concurrent tasks were incorporated into the Functional Gait Assessment (FGA). The manual dual-task involved carrying a glass of water (FGA-M) while the cognitive dual-tasks involved numeracy (FGA-N) and literacy (FGA-L) related tasks. FGA scores under single (FGA-S) and dual-task conditions together with associated dual-task costs and response accuracy were determined. Executive function was assessed using The Behavioural Assessment of the Dysexecutive Syndrome (BADS). RESULTS: FGA-N and FGA-L scores were adversely affected in both groups compared to FGA-S (p≤0.001). However, score reductions and dual-task costs were significantly greater for older adults compared to younger adults on FGA-N (p≤0.05) and FGA-L (p≤0.001), with older adult performance on FGA-N associated with falls risk (p≤0.05). Executive function did not appear to be related to dual-tasking ability. CONCLUSION: Findings suggest that cognitively demanding tasks while walking, have a deleterious effect on dynamic balance and could place older adults at a greater risk of falls.
A hybrid Bayesian approach for pessimistic bilevel problems with a new formulation
(2024) Dogan, Vedat; Prestwich, Steven D.; O'Sullivan, Barry; Science Foundation Ireland
In many real-world problems, finding the optimal decision for a decision-maker depends on another decision-maker’s response, and it is called bilevel optimization in mathematical programming. It contains two levels of optimization problems while one appears as a constraint of another one called follower and leader, respectively. In many real-world scenarios, the lower level has multiple global optima and the upper level needs to make worst-case assumptions about the decision of the lower level, called the pessimistic case of the bilevel problem. Various approaches have been implemented over the years to solve generic bilevel problems, but few of them could be extended to pessimistic cases. In this short paper, we first propose a new formulation for the pessimistic case. In this way, we take advantage of the hierarchical structure of bilevel problems to make the results more accurate for pessimistic cases. Then, we implement a black-box approach to solve the pessimistic upper level problem to decrease the necessary function evaluations. The performance of the problem is examined by solving a test benchmark problem from the literature.
A fully Bayesian approach to bilevel problems
(2024) Dogan, Vedat; Prestwich, Steven D.; O'Sullivan, Barry; Science Foundation Ireland
The mathematical models of many real-world decision-making problems contain two levels of optimization. In these models, one of the optimization problems appears as a constraint of the other one, called follower and leader, respectively. These problems are known as bilevel optimization problems (BOPs) in mathematical programming and are widely studied by both classical and evolutionary optimization communities. The nested nature of these problems causes many difficulties such as
non-convexity and disconnectedness for traditional methods, and requires a huge number of function evaluations for evolutionary algorithms. This paper proposes a fully Bayesian optimization approach, called FB-BLO.
We aim to reduce the necessary function evaluations for both upper and lower level problems by iteratively approximating promising solutions with Gaussian process surrogate models at both levels. The proposed FB-BLO algorithm uses the other decision-makers’ observations in its Gaussian process model to leverage the correlation between decisions and objective values. This allows us to extract knowledge from previous decisions for each level. The algorithm has been evaluated on numerous benchmark problems and compared with existing state-of-the-art algorithms. Our evaluation demonstrates the success of our proposed FB-BLO algorithm in terms of both effectiveness and efficiency
Distinguishing the energy and non-energy actions in balancing energy markets
(Elsevier B.V., 2024-09-11) Haji Bashi, Mazaher; Gharibpour, Hassan; Carroll, David; Kerin, Martin J.; Lyons, Padraig
In the European context, balancing energy markets are established to optimise transmission system operator balancing actions closer to real-time. These actions aim to match total generation and consumption subject to a suite of security constraints (e.g., reserve requirements). However, there is no clear border between those actions that are taken due to the reserve requirements (non-energy actions) and those that are primarily taken to supply the demand mismatches (energy actions). To recognise the effect of non-energy actions, existing methods require comparing the results of counterfactual optimisation problems in which the non-energy-action-related constraints were deliberately omitted. This paper proposes a one-off solution enabling TSOs to distinguish energy actions from non-energy ones in the balancing market scheduling problem. By decomposition of the dual variables and clustering the constraints as proposed in this paper, there is no need to solve repetitive counterfactual optimisation problems. Case studies show that in addition to the non-energy actions caused by non-energy-based balancing requirements, the proposed method is able to recognise the energy actions that should be taken due to the non-energy root causes. This feature enables TSOs to efficiently retrace the effect of non-energy actions on the energy-based dispatch instructions issued according to the balancing market schedule.