Bram Stoker

The affable and popular theater manager Bram Stoker was born in Clontarf, Ireland, to Abraham and Charlotte Stoker in 1847, into an Irish Protestant (although not Anglo-Irish) family. After a sickly childhood he grew into a robust sportsman, and attended Trinity College Dublin from 1864 to 1866, finally graduating with a BA in 1870. Following in his father’s footsteps, he joined the Irish Civil Service in 1866, where he had the opportunity to travel around Ireland as a clerk of Petty Sessions, while also becoming an unpaid theater reviewer for the Dublin Evening Mail from 1871 to 1878, and publishing his first short story, “The Crystal Cup,” in London Society 1872. This he followed with a short novel, The Primrose Path, and two short stories, “The Chain of Destiny” and “Buried Treasures,” all in the periodical The Shamrock in 1875. In 1878 he left Dublin with his wife Florence to take up the position of acting manager of Henry Irving’s Lyceum Theatre in London, and fulfilled this role until Irving’s death in 1905, also managing several American tours. In the earlier part of this period, Stoker managed to publish more fiction, including a first collection of short stories, Under the Sunset (1881), and then his first truly accomplished novel, The Snake’s Pass, set in rural Ireland, in 1890. Short but memorable pieces, “The Squaw” and “The Man from Shorrox,” appeared in periodicals in 1893 and 1894, and then two novels, The Watter’s Mou’, based on his knowledge of Cruden Bay near Aberdeen, and The Shoulder of Shasta, both 1895. Dracula, his most famous work, the product of seven years of research and rewriting, appeared in 1897, followed by a Restoration-era romance of much less merit, Miss Betty, in 1898. The Edwardian era saw his rate of productivity increase with The Mystery of the Sea (1902), another romance set in Cruden Bay, The Jewel of Seven Stars (1903), a Gothic “mummy” story, The Man (1905), Personal Reminiscences of Henry Irving in 1906 (his most successful work in sales terms), and Lady Athlyne and Snowbound (a collection of theatrical short stories), both in 1908. His final, post-theater years were beset with ill health and monetary problems, as he resorted to journalism to supplement his income. However, he also produced the topical Balkan romance The Lady of the Shroud in 1909, and the chaotic The Lair of the White Worm in 1911, before dying the next year, his vibrant personality quietly mourned by London society.

University Students with Intellectual Disabilities: Empowerment through Voice

People with disabilities have been among the most marginalised groups both within society and within post-secondary/higher education. Over the last two decades, an increasing number of inclusive educational programmes have come into existence both nationally and internationally for this group of learners. The Trinity Centre for People with Intellectual Disabilities (TCPID), School of Education, Trinity College Dublin, offers students with intellectual disabilities a two-year programme entitled Arts, Science and Inclusive Applied Practice (ASIAP). This paper presents a selection of voices from ASIAP students which highlights their experiences of becoming both co-researchers and second language learners. These studies present a variety of ways in which power relationships are negotiated between faculty and students through utilising creative and inclusive approaches to the research process.

Speaker-Independent Speech Enhancement with Brain Signals

Single-channel speech enhancement algorithms have seen great improvements over the past few years. Despite these improvements, they still lack the efficiency of the auditory system in extracting attended auditory information in the presence of competing speakers. Recently, it has been shown that the attended auditory information can be decoded from the brain activity of the listener. In this paper, we propose two novel deep learning methods referred to as the Brain Enhanced Speech Denoiser (BESD) and the U-shaped Brain Enhanced Speech Denoiser (U-BESD) respectively, that take advantage of this fact to denoise a multi-talker speech mixture. We use a Feature-wise Linear Modulation (FiLM) between the brain activity and the sound mixture, to better extract the features of the attended speaker to perform speech enhancement. We show, using electroencephalography (EEG) signals recorded from the listener, that U-BESD outperforms a current autoencoder approach in enhancing a speech mixture as well as a speech separation approach that uses brain activity. Moreover, we show that both BESD and U-BESD successfully extract the attended speaker without any prior information about this speaker. This makes both algorithms great candidates for realistic applications where no prior information about the attended speaker is available, such as hearing aids, cellphones, or noise cancelling headphones. All procedures were performed in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki and were approved by the Ethics Committees of the School of Psychology at Trinity College Dublin, and the Health Sciences Faculty at Trinity College Dublin.

Speaker-Independent Speech Enhancement with Brain Signals

Single-channel speech enhancement algorithms have seen great improvements over the past few years. Despite these improvements, they still lack the efficiency of the auditory system in extracting attended auditory information in the presence of competing speakers. Recently, it has been shown that the attended auditory information can be decoded from the brain activity of the listener. In this paper, we propose two novel deep learning methods referred to as the Brain Enhanced Speech Denoiser (BESD) and the U-shaped Brain Enhanced Speech Denoiser (U-BESD) respectively, that take advantage of this fact to denoise a multi-talker speech mixture. We use a Feature-wise Linear Modulation (FiLM) between the brain activity and the sound mixture, to better extract the features of the attended speaker to perform speech enhancement. We show, using electroencephalography (EEG) signals recorded from the listener, that U-BESD outperforms a current autoencoder approach in enhancing a speech mixture as well as a speech separation approach that uses brain activity. Moreover, we show that both BESD and U-BESD successfully extract the attended speaker without any prior information about this speaker. This makes both algorithms great candidates for realistic applications where no prior information about the attended speaker is available, such as hearing aids, cellphones, or noise cancelling headphones. All procedures were performed in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki and were approved by the Ethics Committees of the School of Psychology at Trinity College Dublin, and the Health Sciences Faculty at Trinity College Dublin.

University students and study habits

Objectives: The objective of this study was to understand the variables or study habits that inform study in undergraduate and postgraduate students attending Trinity College Dublin. Methods: A descriptive, cross-sectional anonymous online survey was used to gather data to explore student study habits. Survey 1 was completed by participants in April 2019 and survey 2 was completed by participants in April 2020, during the COVID-19 restrictions. Results: A total of 1557 participants completed survey 1 in 2019, and 1793 participants completed survey 2 in 2020. In both surveys a majority reported using caffeine, library study, sleep pattern adjustment and excercise to aid academic performance. Survey 2 participants reported COVID-19 resulted in increased difficulty studying (91%). In particular loss of structure and routine was negatively impacted by the pandemic (92%), and increased feelings of stress were reported (75%). Conclusions: Our study suggests a potential role of the college environment as a target for the implementation of interventions to promote student learning, healthy study habits and well-being. The global pandemic has resulted in additional challenging demands for universities to serve an essential role in supporting college students study habits.

First person – Rebecca Rolfe

ABSTRACT First Person is a series of interviews with the first authors of a selection of papers published in Disease Models & Mechanisms, helping early-career researchers promote themselves alongside their papers. Rebecca Rolfe is first author on ‘Joint development recovery on resumption of embryonic movement following paralysis’, published in DMM. Rebecca is a Research and Teaching Fellow in the lab of Prof. Paula Murphy at Trinity College Dublin, Ireland, investigating the role environmental cues play in the correct development of cells and tissues during embryonic development.

The Ramist Context of Berkeley’s Philosophy

Berkeley’s doctrines about mind, the language of nature, substance, minima sensibilia, notions, abstract ideas, inference, and freedom appropriate principles developed by the sixteenth-century logician Peter Ramus and his seventeenth-century followers (e.g. Alexander Richardson, William Ames, John Milton). Even though Berkeley expresses himself in Cartesian or Lockean terms, he relies on a Ramist way of thinking that is not a form of mere rhetoric or pedagogy but a logic and ontology grounded in Stoicism. This chapter summarizes the central features of Ramism, indicates how Berkeley adapts Ramist concepts and strategies, and chronicles Ramism’s pervasiveness in Berkeley’s education, especially at Trinity College Dublin.

COVID-19 Vaccine Acceptance and Hesitancy in Low and Middle Income Countries, and Implications for Messaging

SummaryBackgroundAs vaccination campaigns are deployed worldwide, addressing vaccine hesitancy is of critical importance to ensure sufficient immunization coverage. We analyzed COVID-19 vaccine acceptance across 15 samples covering ten low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) in Asia, Africa, and South America, and two higher income countries (Russia and the United States).MethodsStandardized survey responses were collected from ‘45,928 individuals between June 2020 and January 2021. We estimate vaccine acceptance with robust standard errors clustered at the study level. We analyze stated reasons for vaccine acceptance and hesitancy, and the most trusted sources for advice on vaccination, and we disaggregate acceptance rates by gender, age, and education level.FindingsWe document willingness to take a COVID-19 vaccine across LMIC samples, ranging from 67% (Burkina Faso) to 97% (Nepal). Willingness was considerably higher in LMICs (80%) than in the United States (65%) and Russia (30%). Vaccine acceptance was primarily explained by an interest in personal protection against the disease (91%). Concern about side effects (40%) was the most common reason for reluctance. Health workers were considered the most trusted sources of information about COVID-19 vaccines.InterpretationGiven high levels of stated willingness to accept a COVID-19 vaccine across LMIC samples, our study suggests that prioritizing efficient and equitable vaccine distribution to LMICs will yield high returns in promoting immunization on a global scale. Messaging and other community-level interventions in these contexts should be designed to help translate intentions into uptake, and emphasize safety and efficacy. Trusted health workers are ideally positioned to deliver these messages.FundingBeyond Conflict, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Columbia University, Givewell.org, Ghent University, HSE University Basic Research Program, International Growth Centre, Jameel Poverty Action Lab Crime and Violence Initiative, London School of Economics and Political Science, Mulago Foundation, NOVAFRICA at the Nova School of Business and Economics, NYU Abu Dhabi, Oxford Policy Management, Social Science Research Council, Trinity College Dublin COVID19Response Funding, UK Aid, UKRI GCRF/Newton Fund, United Nations Office for Project Services, Weiss Family Fund, WZB Berlin Social Science Center, Yale Institute for Global Health, Yale Macmillan Center, and anonymous donors to IPA and Y-RISE