<div>The biological underpinnings that control iris pigmentation and facial morphology are two areas of research that over the last decade are becoming more thoroughly investigated due to the increased affordability of genotyping and advances in technology allowing for more advanced analysis techniques. Despite the ease of access to the data and the tools required to perform iris pigmentation and facial morphological studies, there are still numerous challenges researchers must overcome when exploring the genetics of these complex phenotypes. Some of these challenges include difficulty in working with the bioinformatic programs designed to analyze genetic associations, the inability to define a phenotype that captures the true nature of these traits, and analysis techniques that fail to model complex gene-gene interactions and their effect on a phenotype or phenotypes of interest.</div><div><br></div><div>In this body of work, I attempted to address these challenges by designing a bioinformatic pipeline, Odyssey, that bridges the communication gaps between various data preparation programs and the programs that analyze genomic data. With this program, genome-wide association studies (GWAS) could be conducted in a quicker, more efficient, and easier manner. I also redefined iris color as a quantitative measurement of pre-defined color classes. In this way it is possible to define and quantify the unique and intricate mixtures of color, which allows for the identification of known and novel variants that affect individual iris color. I also improved upon current prediction models by developing a neural network model capable of predicting a quantitative output to four pre-defined classes; blue/grey, light brown (hazel), perceived green, and dark brown. I examined the effects of defining a simple facial morphology phenotype that more accurately captures the lower face and jaw shape. I then analyzed this phenotype via a GWAS and found several novel variants that may be associated with a square and diamond shaped face. Lastly, I demonstrated that structural equation modeling can be used in combination with traditional GWAS to examine interactions amongst associated variants, which unearths potential biological relationships that impact the multifaceted phenotype of facial morphology.</div>

The human eye is a conspicuous and unique component of facial appearance. From other mammalian eyes it is set apart mainly by its unusual shape, visible white sclera, and a wide range of iris colours, which is something unique within a single species. Whether alone or in the context of the face as a whole, eye colour is an underexplored area within research into the perception of various personality traits. In this thesis, the author first reviews the physiological factors connected with eye colour and reported correlations between eye colour and different psychological and behavioural conditions. This is followed by an investigation of a possible relationship between eye colour and perceived dominance and attractiveness. The first and second study examines whether and to what extent eye colour is associated with facial morphology responsible for perceived dominance. The results are ambiguous. A cross-cultural comparison in the third study revealed that faces with blue eyes are judged as more attractive only in populations where individuals with darker eyes predominate. It is thus discussed whether this population-specific pattern is the consequence of a negative frequency-dependent selection that may have contributed to the present-day eye colour diversity. In short, the aim of this thesis was to...

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Amartya Sen y Martha Nussbaum son dos de los principales teóricos que le dieron origen a la propuesta del desarrollo humano, también entendido como el enfoque de las capacidades y ampliación de libertades. Sus presupuestos filosóficos se han ido acentuando con el tiempo, siendo los más destacados aquellos que hacen referencia a la teoría aristotélica acerca del buen vivir. Desde esta perspectiva, el desarrollo de las capacidades del ser humano tiene por fin último la εὐδαιμονία, entendida como el florecimiento humano o la felicidad. Desde el enfoque, se propone que los individuos tengan acceso a las oportunidades básicas que le permitan tener libertad de elección para optar por el tipo de vida que tiene razones para valorar. En este sentido, la democracia y la deliberación pública cobran un rol fundamental para alcanzar los fines del desarrollo humano, en el marco de la ampliación de la libertad política. El principal objetivo de esta tesis reside, en este sentido, en una ampliación de la línea de investigación del enfoque de desarrollo humano en relación a la democracia y la deliberación pública. Para ello, en el desarrollo de esta investigación también se hará una fundamental referencia a las investigaciones de Iris Marion Young, quien por su parte, realiza una propuesta más inclusiva de la democracia.

Biometric systems allow identification of human persons based on physiological or behavioral characteristics, such as voice, handprint, iris or facial characteristics. The use of face and iris recognition as a way to authenticate user’s identities has been a topic of research for years. Present iris recognition systems require that subjects stand close (<2m) to the imaging camera and look for a period of about three seconds until the data are captured. This cooperative behavior is required in order to capture quality images for accurate recognition. This will eventually restrict the amount of practical applications where iris recognition can be applied, especially in an uncontrolled environment where subjects are not expected to cooperate such as criminals and terrorists, for example. For this reason, this thesis develops a collection of methods to deal with low quality face and iris images and that can be applied for face and iris recognition in a non-cooperative environment. This thesis makes the following main contributions: I. For eye and face tracking in low quality images, a new robust method is developed. The proposed system consists of three parts: face localization, eye detection and eye tracking. This is accomplished using traditional image-based passive techniques such as shape information of the eye and active based methods which exploit the spectral properties of the pupil under IR illumination. The developed method is also tested on underexposed images where the subject shows large head movements. II. For iris recognition, a new technique is developed for accurate iris segmentation in low quality images where a major portion of the iris is occluded. Most existing methods perform generally quite well but tend to overestimate the occluded regions, and thus lose iris information that could be used for identification. This information loss is potentially important in the covert surveillance applications we consider in this thesis. Once the iris region is properly segmented using the developed method, the biometric feature information is calculated for the iris region using the relative entropy technique. Iris biometric feature information is calculated using two different feature decomposition algorithms based on Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and Independent Component Analysis (ICA). III. For face recognition, a new approach is developed to measure biometric feature information and the changes in biometric sample quality resulting from image degradations. A definition of biometric feature information is introduced and an algorithm to measure it proposed, based on a set of population and individual biometric features, as measured by a biometric algorithm under test. Examples of its application were shown for two different face recognition algorithms based on PCA (Eigenface) and Fisher Linear Discriminant (FLD) feature decompositions.

Denna studie undersöker anställdas inställning till BA som MFA-metod på svenska SMF, även vilken BA-metod som anses lämpligast för användning. Tidigare studier har främst fokuserat på större organisationer och företag med kvantitativa forskningsmetoder. Därav har denna studie valt att undersöka SMF med en kvalitativ inriktning i formen av en semistrukturerad intervjustudie. Studien genomförde totalt nio intervjuer från varierande företag med respondenter aven mängd olika arbetsroller. Utifrån dessa intervjuer kunde flera teman identifieras, dessa användes för att dra slutsatser kring användarens inställning och vilken BA-metod som föredras i företagskontext. Teman som identifierades utgjorde grunden förde anställdas inställning, exempelvis vilka positiva och negativa aspekter de anställda kunde se med BA som MFA. Resultaten visade att de anställda generellt sett var positivt inställda till BA som MFA-metod och att de flesta kunde tänka sig implementera detta på sin arbetsplats. Av fingeravtryck, röstigenkänning,ansiktsigenkänning och irisskanning föredrog respondenterna fingeravtryck som BA-metod i företagskontext. Studien valde att inte fokusera på företag som redan implementerat BA som MFA. Applikationer och program som anställda använder där BA erbjuds anses inte som att företaget implementerat BA som MFA. / This study examines employees' attitudes towards BA (Biometric Authentication) as an MFA (Multi-Factor Authentication) method at Swedish SMEs, as well as which BA method is considered most suitable for use. Previous studies have focused on larger organizations and companies with quantitative research methods. Therefore, this study has chosen to examine SMEs with a qualitative focus by conducting semistructured interviews. The study conducted a total of nine interviews from various companies with respondents from a variety of work roles. Based on these interviews, several themes could be identified, these were used to draw conclusions about the employees’ attitude and which BA method is preferred in a business context. Themes that were identified formed the basis for the employees' attitude, for example what positive and negative aspects the employees could see with BA as MFA. The results showed that the employees were generally positive about BA as an MFA method and that most could imagine implementing this in their workplace. Focusing on fingerprints, voice recognition, face recognition and iris scanning, the respondents preferred fingerprints as a BA method. The study chose not to focus on companies that have already implemented BA as MFA. Applications and programs that employees use where BA is offered are not considered that the company has implemented BA as MFA.

Baskettränarna i klubben upplever att de kan påverka verksamheten och att deras engagemang gör skillnad för de basketspelande barnen och ungdomarna, för klubben och för sin egen personliga utveckling. Tränarna erfar att det är lättare att påverka och ha inflytande i den interna tränarrollen än i den externa tränarrollen. Omgivningens individer gör skillnad på tränarna och bemötandet tränarna får upplevs vara beroende av vilket kön, vilken ålder och vilken etnicitet tränarna har. Inom basketklubben upplever tränarna att det finns en lyhördhet och öppenhet för varandras olikheter, dels på grund av att alla känner alla i klubben och för att det finns ett socialt klimat och en tydlighet i organisationens beslutsprocesser som gör att tränarna upplever att de kan påverka verksamheten och att deras engagemang är viktigt och meningsfullt. Syftet med uppsatsen är att genom kvalitativa intervjuer med unga baskettränare och öppna observationer i en stockholmsbaserad basketklubb problematisera och se närmare på hur de unga idrottsledarna anser sig ha möjlighet att kunna påverka mer än själva idrottsutövandet inom ramen för sitt engagemang. Vidare är syftet att besvara frågeställningens två delfrågor: Vad upplever och erfar de unga idrottsledarna att de kan påverka och ha inflytande över inom ramen för sitt idrottsengagemang? Hur påverkas de unga idrottsledarna av sitt engagemang i idrottsföreningen? Med hjälp av den teoretiska referensramen belyses hur de sociala relationerna och den demokratiska organisationens uppbyggnad kan skapa ett medborgerligt engagemang, en kommunikativ demokrati och en Känsla av sammanhang för de intervjuade tränarna. / Coaches experience that there is an opportunity to make a difference in somebody’s life as well as within an organisation. The basketball coaches make a difference in young peoples everyday life, in the basketball club but also in their own personal development by being involved in the organisation of the basketball club as coaches. It is easier to make a change in the intern leadership than in the extern leadership. The coaches in this study experience a difference in how they are treated by individuals in the surrounding depending on their age, sex and ethnicity. The coaches experience that there is a sense of openness and understanding within the club as well as a feeling of being listened to. They feel that they have the opportunity to be involved in the decisionmaking processes and that involvement is meaningful and important. The aim of this thesis is to answer the two following questions: How and what do the coaches experience that they are able to influence within their sports leadership? How are the young coaches influenced by their sports involvement? Qualitative interviews and open observations will be used as methods to find answers to the questions. The theoretical frame of references is based on the concepts of social capital, communicative democracy and senses of coherence.

This thesis develops the prioritization guidance and action guidance provided by Iris Marion Young’s Social Connection Model of responsibility for injustice. Young’s parameters of reasoning are limited in their ability to assist responsible agents in determining what they ought to do to fulfill their responsibilities, as they are severed from the structural analysis characteristic of the rest of the SCM. This thesis addresses the resulting limitations by developing categories of prioritization and an action guidance framework. I develop 6 categories of prioritization: power, benefit, interest, centrality, contribution, and control. Applied to social-group-based analysis, these categories determine the strength of the prioritization claim which a given injustice holds over a given social group. The action guidance framework takes the perspective of the political community and works its way through three questions and their corresponding considerations: “What can we do?” –structural change, altering practices, and harm alleviation; “How can we do it?” –understanding sub-issues and sub-options, determining interests, and organizing collectives; and “What can I do?” –eliminating contributory behaviours, and considering personal circumstances. Through this framework, agents can analyze the capacities of the political community and the structures of an injustice to determine which projects should be undertaken and how agents ought to contribute. Finally, the developments of this thesis are applied to the case of landlords and housing, therein establishing the necessity of landlords abandoning rental profits so as to fulfill and not contradict their responsibility to eliminate housing injustice. / Thesis / Master of Arts (MA) / This thesis develops the prioritization guidance and action guidance provided by Iris Marion Young’s Social Connection Model of responsibility for injustice. Young’s parameters of reasoning, meant to provide this guidance, are limited in their ability to assist responsible agents in determining what they ought to do to fulfill their responsibilities. This thesis addresses these limitations by developing 6 categories of prioritization and an action guidance framework. The categories of prioritization determine which social groups ought to prioritize a given injustice. Through the action guidance framework, agents can analyze the capacities of the political community and the structures of an injustice to determine which projects should be undertaken and how agents ought to contribute to them. The developments of this thesis are applied to the case of landlords and housing injustice, therein establishing the necessity of landlords abandoning rental profits.

Reading is a fundamental skill in our modern society; being able to read with comprehension and fluency is an important skill in all core academic subjects. Reading teachers are charged with the task to analyze student data in order to drive their instructional decisions. Informal Reading Inventories (IRIs) are one type of an informal reading assessment that teachers can use in the classroom to learn about student reading behaviors and drive instruction. Informal Reading Inventories assess fluency and comprehension. Research suggests that fluency and comprehension have a reciprocal relationship; meaning, if you improve one skill, you improve the other skill simultaneously (DeVries, 2011). This study explored how pre-service teachers, college students in an education program, and in-service teachers, veteran teachers, analyzed data from various IRIs. This study also explored how three separate IRIs, the Qualitative Reading Inventory (QRI), the Basic Reading Inventory (BRI), and the Analytical Reading Inventory (ARI), compared to one another. There were four participants in this study: two undergraduate students in an elementary education program reading class and two veteran classroom teachers. This study found that the grade level readability of the passages are inconsistent with the reading level they claim to be. An inconsistency like this is something to note as many teachers only use these resources on which they were trained during their college education. This study also found that the length of the IRI passages had an effect on the student’s words correct per minute (WCPM); the longer the passage, the lower the WCPM. This is probably due to the fact that students need more time to process a passage for the sake of comprehension.

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