Engaging and Sustaining the Interest of Malaysian Youth towards the Palm Oil Industry

There is no denying that palm oil industry has long been the backbone of Malaysia's economy. It is an industry that continues to be relevant in order to meet both local and global demand for edible oil and biofuel markets. The idea that the industry holds no appeal for youth is a common belief frequently shared by the youth themselves, as well as other stakeholders in agriculture. The key to engaging Malaysian youth and to increase their participation is to first understand their attitude and motivation towards the oil palm sector. This is the first step in understanding the factors underlying their motivation and gauging their level of engagement towards the sector. A set of questionnaires was distributed to 50 FELDA respondents followed by a focus group interview of 5 FELDA youth. Our qualitative data gauged the level of FELDA youth engagement through attitudinal resources while the survey measured the categorical and ordinal level of 8 industry constructs with variables such as gender, age, and education level. In general, the findings revealed insights into palm oil industry’s strengths and weaknesses in relation to positive and negative attitude, motivation, and engagement of FELDA youth towards the sector.

Phylogenomics of parasitic and non-parasitic lice (Insecta: Psocodea): Combining sequence data and Exploring compositional bias solutions in Next Generation Datasets

The insect order Psocodea is a diverse lineage comprising both parasitic (Phthiraptera) and non-parasitic members (Psocoptera). The extreme age and ecological diversity of the group may be associated with major genomic changes, such as base compositional biases expected to affect phylogenetic inference. Divergent morphology between parasitic and non-parasitic members has also obscured the origins of parasitism within the order. We conducted a phylogenomic analysis on the order Psocodea utilizing both transcriptome and genome sequencing to obtain a data set of 2,370 orthologous genes. All phylogenomic analyses, including both concatenated and coalescent methods suggest a single origin of parasitism within the order Psocodea, resolving conflicting results from previous studies. This phylogeny allows us to propose a stable ordinal level classification scheme that retains significant taxonomic names present in historical scientific literature and reflects the evolution of the group as a whole. A dating analysis, with internal nodes calibrated by fossil evidence, suggests an origin of parasitism that predates the K-Pg boundary. Nucleotide compositional biases are detected in third and first codon positions and result in the anomalous placement of the Amphientometae as sister to Psocomorpha when all nucleotide sites are analyzed. Likelihood-mapping and quartet sampling methods demonstrate that base compositional biases can also have an effect on quartet-based methods.

Insights into the ancestral flowers of Ranunculales

The question of the origin of petals has long been debated in the botanical literature. Ranunculales are characterized by a spectacular floral diversity, particularly at the perianth level. Recent progress in understanding the genetic bases of floral organ identity suggests a single origin for petals in Ranunculaceae, contrasting with the traditional morphological hypothesis of repeated evolution. However, perianth evolution at the ordinal level remains incompletely understood. Recent advances in the elucidation of phylogenetic relationships in the order now provide a new opportunity to study character evolution with model-based methods. We used ancestral state reconstruction methods that take into account various sources of uncertainty to reconstruct the evolution of floral traits at the scale of Ranunculales using a consensus phylogenetic framework of 144 terminal species representing all families in the order. Ancestrally, Ranunculales probably had three trimerous whorls of perianth organs differentiated into two categories of petaloid organs differing in their shape. Each whorl was further lost or duplicated. Moreover, our results support the hypothesis of a single origin of highly specialized (elaborate) nectariferous petals in Ranunculaceae.

Subjective Measurement of Trust: Is It on the Level?

Psychometrics are increasingly being used to evaluate trust in the automation of safety-critical systems. There is no consensus on what the highest level of measurement is for psychometric trust. This is important as the level of measurement determines what mathematics and statistics can be meaningfully applied to ratings. In this work, we introduce a new method for determining what the maximum level of measurement is for psychometric ratings. We use this to assess the level of measurement of trust in automation using human ratings about the behavior of unmanned aerial systems performing search tasks. Results show that trust is best represented at an ordinal level and that it can be treated as interval in most situations. It is unlikely that trust in automation ratings are ratio. We discuss these results, their implications, and future research.

Capturing Ordinal Theoretical Constraint in Psychological Science

Most theories in the social sciences are verbal and provide ordinal-level predictions for data. For example, a theory might predict that performance is better in one condition than another, but not by how much. One way of gaining additional specificity is to posit many ordinal constraints that hold simultaneously. For example a theory might predict an effect in one condition, a larger effect in another, and none in a third. We show how common theoretical positions naturally lead to multiple ordinal constraints. To assess whether multiple ordinal constraints hold in data, we adopt a Bayesian model comparison approach. The result is an inferential system that is custom-tuned for the way social scientists conceptualize theory, and that is more intuitive and informative than current linear-model approaches.

Examination of the structure of the traditional/secular-rational and survival/self-expression value dimensions in the model of Ronald Inglehart: The case of Serbia

The paper examines applicability of Inglehart?s model of dimensions of traditional/secular-rational values and survival/self expresion values, based on European Values Study data, conducted in Serbia in 2008. Dimensions of values are extracted by applying nonlinear principal component analysis, with asigning ordinal level of analysis. We present three-dimensional solution which separates dimension of survival/self expresion values into two dimensions. The deviations from the two-dimensional model were interpreted in accordance with the theory of revised modernization and thesis about value change in dependance of sociocultural paths of developement of society.