66,754 research outputs found
The Development of Methods to Improve In Vitro Embryo Production in Pigs and Cattle
The global livestock industry is continually tasked with developing innovative solutions to meet rising food demand. In both economically developed and developing countries, sustainable supplies are essential for the continuous advances in productivity through genetic selection to improve feed conversion efficiency, disease resistance, and fertility. The interval between conception and birth, however, limits the rate at which these enhancements can be implemented. Furthermore, companies often export breeding animals to developing countries to boost genetic quality, but this comes with production, environmental, and logistical costs, as well as ethical issues.
In vitro embryo production (IVP) is an emergent technology that is progressively being applied to livestock breeding. IVP could bring incredible economic and environmental benefits, serving to increase selection intensity and facilitate the transport of genetically favourable livestock in a highly assistive, inexpensive, and bio-secure manner. Therefore, the main purpose of this thesis was to improve the efficiency of IVP procedures. IVP offers attractive benefits to breeders, such as increasing the offspring numbers derived from high genetic value animals, in less time, and at a cheaper cost than those produced in vivo. Moreover, it facilitates the study of the genetic constitution of the embryos to transfer only those carrying commercially desirable traits to improve genetic selection. IVP is key to reducing the transportation of live animals as the transport of embryos decreases the costs and reduces the risk of pathogen or disease transmission, favouring biosecurity. With this in mind, this thesis had five specific aims:
The first was to improve embryo quality with the addition of cytokines to porcine IVM media. This was successfully achieved as improvements were observed in oocyte maturation and developmental competence to produce higher quality embryos than those produced without cytokine supplementation. The second aim was to assess the effect of different sperm selection methods on basic boar sperm parameters and in vitro fertilisation (IVF) outcomes. This aim was partly successful in that it identified a microfluidic chip-based system as a selection method that produces similar parameters and IVF outcomes to density gradient selection, but with less morphological abnormalities. The third was to compare the slow freezing of boar sperm against modified vitrification protocols. The development of a suitable vitrification protocol was successful in preserving basic sperm parameters, but further work is needed to improve the efficiency compared to slow freezing, the "gold standard" in the breeding industry. The fourth aim was to use preimplantation genetic testing for aneuploidies (PGT A) and SNP chip data from genomic estimated breeding values to screen in vitro produced bovine embryos. This allowed for the identification of chromosomal abnormalities and their origin, which when applied to embryo selection can yield improved pregnancy and live birth rates. The final aim was to use PGT-A to screen the inner-cell mass and trophectoderm of in vivo and IVP bovine embryos to identify and analyse chromosomal abnormalities. A comparison of the data between the inner-cell mass and trophectoderm revealed that trophectoderm biopsies reflect the true ploidy status of the embryo and demonstrate a reliable mean for screening embryos. Taken together, these results have improved the efficiency of porcine and cattle IVP procedures, furthering the development of techniques used for livestock animals
Approaches to Support Families' Engagement with Cyber Security for Home IoT Devices
This thesis records research carried out to explore how families in the UK understand and manage the cyber security of Internet of Things (IoT) devices they use in their homes (home IoT devices), using a variety of research methods. It initially engaged parents and children to understand what they think when discussing the cyber security threats and risks that home IoT devices pose and what they do to mitigate the issues they are concerned about. The findings of those discussions then led to a review of the advice individuals may encounter when searching for answers about cyber security online. These discussions also precipitated a period of autoethnography, a reflexive piece of research that allowed the researcher to consider the extent to which cyber security actually occurs in daily life in a family context. These initial pieces of research provided a picture of families --- both adults and children --- keen to use home IoT devices but not really understanding either how they work or how to learn about and manage the threats and risks that the devices pose in the home. The thesis uses the Transtheoretical Method of Behaviour Change (TTM) as a theoretical base for reflecting upon the place of participant families on the cycle of adoption of cyber security for their home IoT devices. Using this model, it was possible to understand that participant families were, on the whole, at the very first stage of the cycle --- precontemplation, and that the information that they might rely upon is insufficiently robust to support knowledge gathering and raise awareness. Hurdles at home around finding the opportunity to discuss cyber security, or even having the appropriate vocabulary, could also hinder efforts to understand the topic better. To move further along the TTM cycle, training and education would be required to increase their levels of awareness.
To work with families to understand what interventions families may need to increase their awareness of cyber security measures for home IoT devices, a piece of user-centred design work was undertaken to create a serious game. Serious games have been successfully used in organisational and educational settings to teach and explore cyber security concepts before, but not with families at home. The game represented an opportunity to provide participants' families with information on cyber security as it pertains to home IoT devices. This allowed participant families to receive information and possibly move around the TTM cycle at least to the step beyond precontemplation: contemplation. This was evidenced in discussions during and after gameplay about wanting to make changes to their home cyber security setup. In some cases, it was hoped that participants could move further around the cycle to take action, having been motivated by the knowledge provided in the game.
When playing the game, families were given the opportunity to learn about the type of cyber security concerns that could arise in relation to home IoT devices and asked if they would make any modifications to the cyber security measures they use at home in the week following the game. Significantly, more of the gameplay participants did take action to change their cyber security setup in the week following gameplay than a control group that had not had the opportunity to play the game. Almost all participant families discussed their cyber security setup at home during the period of gameplay, and several also reported continuing this discussion in the week following the game, evidencing that the game raised sufficient awareness within the participant families to be able to have conversations about the topic. This suggested that the game could stand as a tool for awareness raising by itself; however, the process of gameplay exposed several other areas where interventions outside the family unit should be made.
This thesis makes several novel contributions, both in terms of the methods used and the findings arising from them. It provides evidence on the level of knowledge within families in the UK about the home IoT devices that they use, how they use them, and their level of comfort with their cyber security setup. Through discussions with participant families and analysis of survey results, the reliance on the Internet for the gathering of knowledge in relation to home IoT device cyber security questions or concerns is made clear. By subsequently analysing the appropriateness of available cyber security information for Internet users, the thesis highlights the lack of visibility of sources to provide targeted and robust guidance. There was also a complete lack of awareness from all participants as to the official governmental agency in the UK from which to gain cyber security guidance. Engaging with participant families over the period of the research consistently highlighted the ease with which cyber security and online safety are conflated in training and education provided at school and thus brought into discussions at home. It is also the case that there is an overwhelmingly strong focus on financial ends rather than identity-driven ones: the value of devices (in terms of replacement) and financial loss are what families worry about, not data loss or possible physical threats emanating from home IoT device use.
The use of an autoethnographic diary study provided a means to use reflexive research to explore issues around lack of awareness, conflation of online safety and cyber security, and the difficulty of finding available information online. It further uncovered difficulties that families may have in describing cyber security issues and requirements, simply because the terminology is too complicated, the actions are too complex (or boring), or the end result does not obviously make a difference. Finally, the use of user-centred design with participant families to develop a serious board game, to build awareness, as evidenced in discussion about home IoT device cyber security measures is novel. Analysis of the participant families' interaction with and actions arising from gameplay show that given training and education, families will use this knowledge to facilitate discussion on the subject, but they may need guidance to ensure that they are discussing topics appropriately. It also showed that, being motivated to take action as a result of gaining knowledge from gameplay, families may attempt to make changes to their cyber security setup for home IoT devices, with varying levels of success and appropriate use. Single-action measures (such as setting up a guest network) are the most popular, although perhaps not the most effective, in terms of managing common cyber security problems. Repetitive actions (such as turning devices off when not in use) seem to quickly fall out of favour, despite being relatively effective and inexpensive, financially at least, to implement. All of these aspects allow for a range of recommendations for improvements to help families have safe home IoT devices
Proximity and size of protected areas in Asian borderlands enable transboundary conservation
Asia has over 80% of the Earthâs border hotspots for threatened transboundary wildlife, yet only limited research has been done on the distribution of protected areas across international borders in the continent. To address this gap, we conducted a spatial analysis of protected areas across 42 Asian countries. Our study aimed to understand the distribution, proximity, and land-use changes within border protected areas. Two cases were examined, evaluating the spatial relationships at different buffer distances from international borders. Our findings revealed that Asian countries have larger protected areas in borderlands, particularly up to 50 km from borders, as compared to regions further away from the border. Importantly, the median distance between protected areas across international borders is nearly three times shorter than those within the same country. However, the rate of change in natural habitats within protected areas between 2001 and 2019 showed no correlation with their distance from the border. The proximity of protected areas across Asian borders offers opportunities for enhancing connectivity. A larger extent of multi-use protected areas (IUCN1-6+) near borders compared to strict protected areas (IUCN1-4) can facilitate the engagement of communities, which are crucial in transboundary conservation initiatives. Our results can help Asian countries as they work toward their commitments as part of the KunmingâMontreal Global Biodiversity Framework to protect at least 30% of the Earthâs surface area by 2030
Mobile Device Background Sensors: Authentication vs Privacy
The increasing number of mobile devices in recent years has caused the collection of a large amount of personal information that needs to be protected. To this aim, behavioural biometrics has become very popular. But, what is the discriminative power of mobile behavioural biometrics in real scenarios? With the success of Deep Learning (DL), architectures based on Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) and Recurrent Neural Networks (RNNs), such as Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM), have shown improvements compared to traditional machine learning methods. However, these DL architectures still have limitations that need to be addressed. In response, new DL architectures like Transformers have emerged. The question is, can these new Transformers outperform previous biometric approaches? To answers to these questions, this thesis focuses on behavioural biometric authentication with data acquired from mobile background sensors (i.e., accelerometers and gyroscopes). In addition, to the best of our knowledge, this is the first thesis that explores and proposes novel behavioural biometric systems based on Transformers, achieving state-of-the-art results in gait, swipe, and keystroke biometrics. The adoption of biometrics requires a balance between security and privacy. Biometric modalities provide a unique and inherently personal approach for authentication. Nevertheless, biometrics also give rise to concerns regarding the invasion of personal privacy. According to the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) introduced by the European Union, personal data such as biometric data are sensitive and must be used and protected properly. This thesis analyses the impact of sensitive data in the performance of biometric systems and proposes a novel unsupervised privacy-preserving approach. The research conducted in this thesis makes significant contributions, including: i) a comprehensive review of the privacy vulnerabilities of mobile device sensors, covering metrics for quantifying privacy in relation to sensitive data, along with protection methods for safeguarding sensitive information; ii) an analysis of authentication systems for behavioural biometrics on mobile devices (i.e., gait, swipe, and keystroke), being the first thesis that explores the potential of Transformers for behavioural biometrics, introducing novel architectures that outperform the state of the art; and iii) a novel privacy-preserving approach for mobile biometric gait verification using unsupervised learning techniques, ensuring the protection of sensitive data during the verification process
An adaptive variable neighbourhood search approach for the dynamic vehicle routing problem
In the traditional vehicle routing problem (VRP), a route plan is pre-determined and remains unchanged afterwards. However in practice, several unforeseen events could occur at any point, which cause traffic congestion and delay to the original planned routes. It is therefore important to re-optimise the routes by taking into consideration the real-time information, leading to the Dynamic VRP (DVRP). While most of the DVRP literature mainly focused on the customer requests as the dynamic aspect, this paper, however, concentrates on the dynamic traffic information based on the level of urgency of the accidents. Critical nodes are introduced into the network to provide a diversion opportunity for the en-route vehicle. This novel concept of âcriticalityâ is also more practical than the commonly adopted strategy that allows instantaneous diversion at the current vehicle location. We proposed an adaptive variable neighbourhood search (AVNS) algorithm to generate routes in the static environment which is then adapted accordingly for the dynamic setting. This is a two stage VNS approach with the first one acts as a learning stage whose information is then used in stage 2. Here, a smaller number of neighbourhoods and local searches are chosen at each iteration while adopting a pseudo-random selection procedure derived from stage 1. To provide solution diversity, a large neighbourhood search is also embedded into the search. The flexibility and adaptability of our AVNS approach are demonstrated by the high quality solutions obtained when tested on the commonly used VRP datasets, ranging in size from 50 to 1200 customers, which are modified accordingly. In addition, managerial insights related to the tightness of the routes are also presented and analysed
Reflecting on the role of humanâfelid conflict and local use in big cat trade
Illegal trade in big cat (Panthera spp.) body parts is a prominent topic in scientific and public discourses concerning wildlife conservation. While illegal trade is generally acknowledged as a threat to big cat species, we suggest that two enabling factors have, to date, been underâconsidered. To that end, we discuss the roles of humanâfelid conflict, and âlocalâ use in illegal trade in big cat body parts. Drawing examples from across species and regions, we look at generalities, contextual subtleties, ambiguities, and definitional complexities. We caution against underestimating the extent of âlocalâ use of big cats and highlight the potential of conflict killings to supply body parts
Judgment of Bad Character Distinguishes Moral Disgust from Anger
Moral violations often evoke disgust. While it has been consistently shown that disgust is a predominant emotion in response to bodily purity violations, its role in sociomoral violations, in which pathogen content or misuse of the body is not involved, is still debated. Inspired by Giner-Sorolla & Chapman (2017) who suggested that disgust is more closely associated with judgment of bad moral character than anger, whereas anger is more closely associated with judgment of harmful acts and consequences than disgust, the current research further examined this hypothesis from three different angles. Drawing on the research literature on dark personalities, Experiments 1 to 3 (Ns = 191, 180, 157) used non-harmful behavioural signals of sadism, narcissism, and Machiavellianism, respectively, to manipulate agents' bad moral character in vignettes, and found that disgust (vs. anger) responded more sensitively to bad moral character, whereas anger (vs. disgust) responded more sensitively to harm. Experiments 4 and 5 (Ns = 146, 186) tested whether framing moral offences to highlight either the agents' bad character or harm they caused increases disgust or anger. Results showed that the framing had limited influences on people's emotional responses. Experiment 6 (N = 224) showed that expressions of disgust (vs. anger) more strongly signal to third-party observers that the target of the emotion has bad moral character. The results shed light on the difference between the two often intertwined moral emotions and the distinct function of disgust in marking individuals with bad moral character independently of harmful consequences of their actions
- âŠ