Glossary of terms for use with the \u27A million hectares for the future\u27 salinity management workshops

This Glossary has been developed as part of the GRDC/NDSP-funded, \u27A Million Hectares for the Future\u27 project with support and input from key personnel from the Department of Agriculture, Western Australia

OpenApePose: a database of annotated ape photographs for pose estimation

Because of their close relationship with humans, non-human apes (chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas, orangutans, and gibbons, including siamangs) are of great scientific interest. The goal of understanding their complex behavior would be greatly advanced by the ability to perform video-based pose tracking. Tracking, however, requires high-quality annotated datasets of ape photographs. Here we present OpenApePose, a new public dataset of 71,868 photographs, annotated with 16 body landmarks, of six ape species in naturalistic contexts. We show that a standard deep net (HRNet-W48) trained on ape photos can reliably track out-of-sample ape photos better than networks trained on monkeys (specifically, the OpenMonkeyPose dataset) and on humans (COCO) can. This trained network can track apes almost as well as the other networks can track their respective taxa, and models trained without one of the six ape species can track the held out species better than the monkey and human models can. Ultimately, the results of our analyses highlight the importance of large specialized databases for animal tracking systems and confirm the utility of our new ape database

Modelling a socialised chatbot using trust development in children: Lessons learnt from Tay

In 2016 Microsoft released Tay.ai to the Twittersphere, a conversational chatbot that was intended to act like a millennial girl. However, they ended up taking Tay's account down in less than 24 h because Tay had learnt to tweet racist and sexist statements from its online interactions. Taking inspiration from the theory of morality as cooperation, and the place of trust in the developmental psychology of socialisation, we offer a multidisciplinary and pragmatic approach to build on the lessons learnt from Tay's experiences, to create a chatbot that is more selective in its learning, and thus resistant to becoming immoral the way Tay did

Adenovirus vector delivery stimulates natural killer cell recognition

We report that delivery of first-generation replication-deficient adenovirus (RDAd) vectors into primary human fibroblasts is associated with the induction of natural killer (NK) cell-mediated cytolysis in vitro. RDAd vector delivery induced cytolysis by a range of NK cell populations including the NK cell clone NKL, primary polyclonal NK lines and a proportion of NK clones (36 %) in autologous HLA-matched assays. Adenovirus-induced cytolysis was inhibited by antibody blocking of the NK-activating receptor NKG2D, implicating this receptor in this function. NKG2D is ubiquitously expressed on NK cells and CD8+ T cells. Significantly, γ-irradiation of the vector eliminated the effect, suggesting that breakthrough expression from the vector induces at least some of the pro-inflammatory responses of unknown aetiology following the application of RDAd vectors during in vivo gene delivery

Deletion of a Csf1r enhancer selectively impacts CSF1R expression and development of tissue macrophage populations

The proliferation, differentiation and survival of mononuclear phagocytes depend on signals from the receptor for macrophage colony-stimulating factor, CSF1R. The mammalian Csf1r locus contains a highly conserved super-enhancer, the fms-intronic regulatory element (FIRE). Here we show that genomic deletion of FIRE in mice selectively impacts CSF1R expression and tissue macrophage development in specific tissues. Deletion of FIRE ablates macrophage development from murine embryonic stem cells. Csf1rΔFIRE/ΔFIRE mice lack macrophages in the embryo, brain microglia and resident macrophages in the skin, kidney, heart and peritoneum. The homeostasis of other macrophage populations and monocytes is unaffected, but monocytes and their progenitors in bone marrow lack surface CSF1R. Finally, Csf1rΔFIRE/ΔFIRE mice are healthy and fertile without the growth, neurological or developmental abnormalities reported in Csf1r−/− rodents. Csf1rΔFIRE/ΔFIRE mice thus provide a model to explore the homeostatic, physiological and immunological functions of tissue-specific macrophage populations in adult animals

Mechanism of KMT5B haploinsufficiency in neurodevelopment in humans and mice.

Pathogenic variants in KMT5B, a lysine methyltransferase, are associated with global developmental delay, macrocephaly, autism, and congenital anomalies (OMIM# 617788). Given the relatively recent discovery of this disorder, it has not been fully characterized. Deep phenotyping of the largest (n = 43) patient cohort to date identified that hypotonia and congenital heart defects are prominent features that were previously not associated with this syndrome. Both missense variants and putative loss-of-function variants resulted in slow growth in patient-derived cell lines. KMT5B homozygous knockout mice were smaller in size than their wild-type littermates but did not have significantly smaller brains, suggesting relative macrocephaly, also noted as a prominent clinical feature. RNA sequencing of patient lymphoblasts and Kmt5b haploinsufficient mouse brains identified differentially expressed pathways associated with nervous system development and function including axon guidance signaling. Overall, we identified additional pathogenic variants and clinical features in KMT5B-related neurodevelopmental disorder and provide insights into the molecular mechanisms of the disorder using multiple model systems

A comment on the pursuit to align AI: we do not need value-aligned AI, we need AI that is risk-averse

AI Safety, AI Alignment, and the eventual demise of society due to superintelligent beings have recently become topics of public and even political interest. So much so that there were calls to halt all development on Artificial Intelligence until these issues had been addressed (see BBC News, May 2023), Elon Musk has established another organisation (‘xAI’) aimed at tackling such issues, and global leaders have organised global summits to prioritise research in the area. Needless to say; with the introduction of ChatGPT, there has been a growing interest in and precedence to solve issues to prevent the AI dystopian scenarios we might be familiar with from science fiction

Raising Robots to be Good: a practical interpretation, framework and methodology for developing moral machines

Over recent years there has been a developing interest in AI and ethics, with some researchers attempting to bestow upon machines the capacity for them to make their own ethical decisions. These recent attempts have raised a significant amount of attention, largely owing to their failure. Where Machine Ethics can be described as the pursuit to create machines with the capacity to make moral decisions, this thesis carries out an in-depth exploration and investigation into this area, and specifically, how we might create machines with morals. In turn, it proposes a practical framework, methodology and then design for their implementation through appeal to practical case studies, philosophical and psychological insight. The central ideas behind this thesis are that Machine Ethics requires a reframing – to Machine Ethics 2.0 – and that instead of trying to create machines that simply replicate (or mimic) human morality, we should be trying to create machines that are equipped with the necessary features to develop their own moral outlook. In turn, this means that rather than simply bestowing upon machines moral decision-making, influenced by our own human outlook of the world, supported by the necessary architecture for moral agency, we should be looking at the developmental framework for cultivating moral growth in our machines: raising robots to be good

Glossary of terms for use with the \u27A million hectares for the future\u27 salinity management workshops

This Glossary has been developed as part of the GRDC/NDSP-funded, \u27A Million Hectares for the Future\u27 project with support and input from key personnel from the Department of Agriculture, Western Australia