CONSTRAINTS OF THE IMAGINATION: HOW PHENOTYPES ARE SHAPED THROUGH GENETICS, THE ENVIRONMENT, AND DEVELOPMENT

Phenotypic constraints are ubiquitous throughout nature, being found throughout all stages of life and at multiple different biological levels including cellular, genetic, environmental, behavioral, evolutionary, and developmental. These constraints have shaped, not only the natural world, but the way that we perceive what is possible, or impossible, an observation made clear by François Jacob in his 1977 paper “Evolution and Tinkering”. This is reflected in the literature, repeatedly, by the regular occurrence of densely packed visualization of phenotypic space that seemingly always have large areas that go unoccupied. Despite constrained regions of space being observable across countless taxa, identifying the mechanisms of those constraints remains elusive. Given that constraints are widespread and have influenced how evolution may work, my aim was to identify mechanisms of constraint throughout multiple biological levels. Chapter one is divided into two parts, sections A and B, but largely focuses on how constraints are influenced by genetics. For this, we investigated crocc2, a protein that encodes for a structural component of the ciliary rootlet which in turn plays a major role as a mechanosensory for nearly all cells. We found dysfunctional crocc2 resulted in both dysmorphic bone development and a decrease in the plastic response potential of zebrafish (section A), as well as altered developmental trajectories in juvenile morphology, presumably due to alterations in cellular polarity and inadequate extracellular communication. Importantly, all results from this chapter point toward crocc2 play a canalizing role in the production of phenotypes at multiple life-history stages. Chapter 2 takes a different approach into understanding constrains by looking at broad ecological alterations and how those alterations may alter morphology of resident taxa. Here, we utilized the heavily altered habitat of the Tocantins River in the Amazon and the existing museum collections to evaluate how select representatives of the cichlid community had responded to such change. We found significant changes in contemporary morphology across all included cichlid species compared to their historical counterparts. These data show that alterations to the environment have resulted in changes to the local resident species, and possibly an alteration to their future evolutionary trajectories. Among the species included, one was found to have the most substantial morphological changes, which is what we followed up in the next chapter. Chapter 3 dug into the morphological changes of Satanoperca, a Geophagine cichlid with a unique feeding mechanism known as winnowing. Winnowing is a poorly understood mechanical process involving substrate manipulation. Given that anthropogenic alterations to local hydrology oft result in changes to the benthic sediment composition, we wanted to know if differing substrates was enough to induce a plastic response in winnowing fishes, and if so which traits were effected. We found significant differences across our experimental populations in both shape and disparity and present evidence in support of wide-spread integration across craniofacial traits. In addition, these data suggest that the novel anatomical structure, the epibranchial lobe, is more modular than other craniofacial traits involved in the winnowing process. Chapters 4 and 5 utilize a unique lineage of fishes, the Bramidae, to understand how developmental and evolutionary constraints are broken to produce morphological novelties. We used a combination of DNA sequences from GenBank and numerous museum specimens to illuminate constraints and determine how constraints are broken to produce complex phenotypic novelties. In Chapter 4, we found that the fanfishes had experienced greater rates of morphological evolution than other members of the Bramidae family, resulting in their occupation of an entirely novel region of phenotypic space. In Chapter 5, we elaborated on this by investigating the developmental processes involved in producing an extreme morphological novelty. The data presented in Chapter 5 provide evidence suggesting that the fanfishes have broken various constraints, resulting in prominent anatomical and morphological changes to accommodate their novel phenotype. In all, my dissertation provides examples of how constraints have shaped the variability that we see throughout life and shows examples of how constraints can be identified, what happens when they are broken, and how they work to control the pace and trajectory of evolutionary processes

IMPLEMENTATION OF RADIO FREQUENCY IDENTIFICATION (RFID) INTO THE MATRIC CARD TO FUNCTION AS E-WALLET

The implementation of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) integrated into the Matric card as a payment card is to provide an effective and efficient payment system that will help the user which is the students of University Teknologi PETRONAS (UTP). This system will help to reduce transaction time during the purchase of goods and products. The application of the smart card act as a payment card in purchasing goods and products. Money is loaded into the card to enable payment method. The payment module is embedded into the matric card to make it convenient for the user and also to increase its functionality. This system emulates the conventional method of paying cash with using card instead while providing a satisfactory experience to its user and also to the cafeteria‟s and mini mart owners. The RFID technology is widely used in most universities for various purposes and payment system has been widely accepted by the population. The adaption of this technology is in line with UTP‟s vision and mission in creating a more technologically savvy University. Wireless technology has a long way to go in Malaysia and using it as smart cards are a step to the widely accepted usage. The adaption of this technology is in line with UTP‟s vision and mission in creating a more technologically savvy University. This project will act as a platform for further applications using RFID technology such as a photocopying card, door access card, attendance card entrance card and many more

Gender equality mainstreaming and the Australian academy : paradoxical effects?

Australian Universities consistently rank highly on lists that celebrate the most gender equal higher education institutions in the world. Despite participation in institutional frameworks for gender equity accreditation, what often lies beneath the outward display of gender equality is a lived experience of inequality. Whilst there is relative gender equality amongst academics employed at universities overall, men continue to dominate appointments at the professorial or senior executive levels. At the same time, gender asymmetries make women’s access to the opportunities and resources that are highly valued by the sector difficult. Women who experience intersections with care, mothering, race, sexual identity, class, and ability face additional obstacles. In this paper, three women in Australian academia attempt to disrupt the dominant masculine ideology and value system by sharing our lived experience of gender (in)equality in the academy

The physiological response to implicit and explicit fear faces in alexithymia

Alexithymia is a form of disordered emotional processing associated with psychiatric illness and poor treatment outcomes. Its hallmarks are difficulty identifying, representing and evaluating emotional material. Research on alexithymia includes investigations of behavioral, physiological and neural responsivity. Findings within and between these different methodologies are inconsistent and often not well motivated. We use the neuroimaging literature to motivate a design that links behavior and physiology in alexithymia. The aims of this study are to determine: 1) whether individuals with alexithymia exhibit behavioral responses to emotional faces that differ from controls and whether there are corresponding changes in physiology, 2) whether behavioral and physiological responses in alexithymia are differentially influenced by an implicit versus explicit manipulation of emotional task context, compared to controls. For Aim 1, we measure behavioral and physiological responses during two explicit facial categorization tasks: an emotion task requiring categorization of morphed emotional facial expressions, and an identity task requiring categorization of morphed facial identities. For Aim 2, we evaluate responses to emotional and neutral facial expressions in two task contexts: in an explicit task participants label the emotion of the face, while in an implicit task participants label the gender of the face. Using these experiments we determined whether undergraduates scoring high or low on alexithymia (TAS-20) differ on accuracy, reaction time, heart rate and skin conductance. Counter to prevailing theories of alexithymia as an appraisal problem, we found that alexithymia participants task accuracy on emotional and non-emotional tasks is intact. We found less sensitivity to fearful faces during an emotion categorization task, but not a non-emotional identity categorization task, as we expected. In alexithymia, we found less sensitivity to emotion and altered heart rate reactivity during implicit and explicit tasks, compared to healthy controls. Counter to current conceptualizations of alexithymia as a difficulty engaging in top-down appraisal of emotional information, our findings suggest that alexithymia may be a problem generating physiological responses to emotional information. Based on our view of alexithymia, we revisit the current state of the alexithymia literature, provide suggestions for future research and propose potential therapeutic interventions

IMPLEMENTATION OF RADIO FREQUENCY IDENTIFICATION (RFID) INTO THE MATRIC CARD TO FUNCTION AS E-WALLET

The implementation of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) integrated into the Matric card as a payment card is to provide an effective and efficient payment system that will help the user which is the students of University Teknologi PETRONAS (UTP). This system will help to reduce transaction time during the purchase of goods and products. The application of the smart card act as a payment card in purchasing goods and products. Money is loaded into the card to enable payment method. The payment module is embedded into the matric card to make it convenient for the user and also to increase its functionality. This system emulates the conventional method of paying cash with using card instead while providing a satisfactory experience to its user and also to the cafeteria‟s and mini mart owners. The RFID technology is widely used in most universities for various purposes and payment system has been widely accepted by the population. The adaption of this technology is in line with UTP‟s vision and mission in creating a more technologically savvy University. Wireless technology has a long way to go in Malaysia and using it as smart cards are a step to the widely accepted usage. The adaption of this technology is in line with UTP‟s vision and mission in creating a more technologically savvy University. This project will act as a platform for further applications using RFID technology such as a photocopying card, door access card, attendance card entrance card and many more

Centering Racial Justice in Sex Education: Strategies for Engaging Professionals and Young People

This practice paper—Centering Racial Justice in Sex Education: Strategies for Engaging Professionals and Young People—serves as a guide to providing racially just practices for those working in the field of sex education. We understand that much like any other work discussing diversity and inclusion practices, this isn't about presenting a list of things that will allow organizations to simply check a box or provide a one-size-fits-all approach. Described throughout these pages is the pursuit of racial justice and equity that requires multi-layered efforts that address the needs of both youth of color and the communities in which they live.This practice paper describes—The need for racial justice and equity in the K–12 sex education space;Methodology of the research conducted with key informants;Content of racially just sex education;Qualities of a racially just sex educator;Administrative and management practices that support sex educators of color; and,Measurement and evaluation practices to enhance sex education for youth of color

UNDERSTANDING RISK FACTORS OF ELDERLY INPATIENT FALLS USING CONTEXTUAL MODEL

The field of Information Systems is about bridging the digital and information divide. Advances in the digital world enable information to be stored and structured in a manner that facilitates effective use of the information for future modelling purposes. Elderly inpatient falls are a common global phenomenon, and an inpatient fall incident can have severe consequences for the patient, caregivers and the healthcare provider. An inpatient fall can result from many causes and its risk can be increased through the combination of these causes. Many risk factors of elderly inpatient falls have been reported in various papers in the literature. However, a logical comprehensive categorisation of all these factors does not currently exist. The objective of this research in progress is to come up with a generic categorisation of the risk factors for elderly inpatient falls alongside the usage of a contextual model to illustrate the inherent interactions amongst these various factors. In addition, we found that the effect of the interaction amongst some risk factors is time dependent which also needs to be incorporated in the contextual model. Such comprehensive categorisation and contextual risk model will help health providers in the process of profiling of an elderly inpatient with respect to his/her fall risk. It is useful to experts in health informatics in formulating models to automate this process

Mandated data archiving greatly improves access to research data

The data underlying scientific papers should be accessible to researchers both now and in the future, but how best can we ensure that these data are available? Here we examine the effectiveness of four approaches to data archiving: no stated archiving policy, recommending (but not requiring) archiving, and two versions of mandating data deposition at acceptance. We control for differences between data types by trying to obtain data from papers that use a single, widespread population genetic analysis, STRUCTURE. At one extreme, we found that mandated data archiving policies that require the inclusion of a data availability statement in the manuscript improve the odds of finding the data online almost a thousand-fold compared to having no policy. However, archiving rates at journals with less stringent policies were only very slightly higher than those with no policy at all. At one extreme, we found that mandated data archiving policies that require the inclusion of a data availability statement in the manuscript improve the odds of finding the data online almost a thousand fold compared to having no policy. However, archiving rates at journals with less stringent policies were only very slightly higher than those with no policy at all. We also assessed the effectiveness of asking for data directly from authors and obtained over half of the requested datasets, albeit with about 8 days delay and some disagreement with authors. Given the long term benefits of data accessibility to the academic community, we believe that journal based mandatory data archiving policies and mandatory data availability statements should be more widely adopted

Toxicity Detection is NOT all you Need: Measuring the Gaps to Supporting Volunteer Content Moderators

Extensive efforts in automated approaches for content moderation have been focused on developing models to identify toxic, offensive, and hateful content -- with the aim of lightening the load for moderators. Yet, it remains uncertain whether improvements on those tasks truly address the needs that moderators have in accomplishing their work. In this paper, we surface the gaps between past research efforts that have aimed to provide automation for aspects of the content moderation task, and the needs of volunteer content moderators. To do so, we conduct a model review on Hugging Face to reveal the availability of models to cover various moderation rules and guidelines. We further put state-of-the-art LLMs to the test (GPT-4 and Llama-2), evaluating how well these models perform in flagging violations of platform rules. Overall, we observe a non-trivial gap, as missing developed models and LLMs exhibit low recall on a significant portion of the rules