Verbal Hate Crimes in the Workplace: The Effect of Mental and Emotional Injury of the LGBT Community on the Commerce Clause

Mental and emotional abuse, particularly of the LGBT community in the workplace, is not a new phenomenon; however, it is one that is detrimental to both workers and companies, and is becoming increasingly prevalent as more workers are openly identifying as members of the LGBT community. The Hate Crimes Prevention Act should be amended to prevent verbal violence against protected characteristics in the workplace specifically, as workplace verbal abuse has as a significant an impact on companies and businesses, and, in turn, interstate commerce and the Commerce Clause

Improving Homeownership Among Poor and Moderate-Income Households

Looks at rates of homeownership, trends in federal low-income rental housing assistance, and types of homeownership programs for low-income households

Logic and Normativity

What is the relationship between logic and thought? One view is that logic merely describes how people think. But this view – called 'psychologism' – cannot be quite right. Logic cannot describe how people reason, because although people can reason well, they can also reason badly. The obvious response is to say that logic does not describe how people do think, but rather prescribes how they ought to think. If logic describes how people ought to reason, then if the premises of a logical argument imply the conclusion of that argument and you believe the premises, then you ought to believe the conclusion. According to classical logic the premise, 'grass is green' implies the conclusion, 'the sky is blue or the sky is not blue', but it seems absurd to say that because I believe that grass is green, I ought to believe that the sky is blue or the sky is not blue. What has gone wrong here? Should the principle, 'if the premises imply the conclusion and you believe the premises, then you ought to believe the conclusion' be changed? If so, perhaps it would be more correct to say, 'if the premises imply the conclusion and you believe the premises, then you have reason to believe the conclusion'. Or is classical logic to blame? Are we mistaken in thinking that 'grass is green' implies 'the sky is blue or the sky is not blue'? I examine a number of arguments that relate to this question. I argue that classical logic deserves a philosophy of logic that does not imply that classical logic is not proper logic

The Subject Matter of Logic: Explaining what logic is about

Logicians disagree about how validity—the very heart of logic—should be understood. Many different formal systems have been born due to this disagreement. This thesis examines how teachers explain the subject matter of logic to students in introductory logic textbooks, and demonstrates the different explanations teachers use. These differences help explain why logicians have different intuitions about validity

Food Sustainability at Cal Poly: Comparative Analysis Between Global and Local Distribution of Produce Items

Baseline data for Cal Poly produce items purchased in 2014, were generated using food miles and Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of transportation related impacts measured in units of global warming potential. A regional simulation of a local food system compiled using Harvest Santa Barbara serves as a model of a regional wholesale produce distributor. Research objectives aim to identify produce items that would significantly decrease food miles and transportation related impacts when sourced through a regional food distributor. Comparative analysis between the global and local food distribution systems, associated with 59 produce types illustrate tomatoes having the most significant impact between the two models, based off of two quantitative metrics (mileage and CO 2 ). Overall switching to a local food distribution system would reduce Cal Poly’s produce transportation emissions by 59.48%

Mothers’ Domestic Responsibilities and Well-Being During the COVID-19 Lockdown: The Moderating Role of Gender Essentialist Beliefs About Parenthood

The present work investigates how the increased domestic responsibilities created by the Spring 2020 lockdown of the COVID-19 pandemic in Norway and gender ideologies relate to the well-being of mothers with elementary school children. In June 2020, we conducted a cross-sectional online study including current and retrospective measures with 180 mothers (Mage = 39.96 years, SD = 6.11) of elementary school children across Norway. First, in line with earlier research on the strain of the pandemic on parents, and especially mothers, we found that Norwegian mothers’ well-being during the lockdown significantly declined compared to before the lockdown (both measured retrospectively). Furthermore, mothers’ well-being after the Spring 2020 lockdown did not immediately return to pre-lockdown levels. Finally, we predicted that gender ideologies (i.e., essentialist beliefs about parenthood) would exacerbate the negative impact of increased domestic responsibilities (i.e., childcare and housework) on mothers’ well-being (i.e., higher standard-higher stress hypothesis). As predicted, for mothers who more strongly endorsed the belief that mothers are instinctively and innately better caretakers than fathers, perceptions of increased domestic responsibilities were associated with lower well-being post-lockdown. These findings point to the specific challenges mothers face in times of crisis, and the importance of addressing and confronting seemingly benevolent ideologies about motherhood that place additional burdens on women

Early identification of mushy Halibut syndrome with hyperspectral image analysis

Mushy Halibut Syndrome (MHS) is a condition that appears in Greenland halibut and manifests itself as abnormally opaque, flaccid and jelly-like flesh. Fish affected by this syndrome show poor meat quality, which results in negative consequences for the fish industry. The research community has not carefully investigated this condition, nor novel technologies for MHS detection have been proposed. In this research work, we propose using hyperspectral imaging to detect MHS. After collecting a dataset of hyperspectral images of halibut affected by MHS, two different goals were targeted. Firstly, the estimation of the chemical composition of the samples (specifically fat and water content) from their spectral data by using constrained spectral unmixing. Secondly, supervised classification using partial least squares discriminant analysis (PLS-DA) was evaluated to identify specimens affected by MHS. The outcomes of our study suggest that the prediction of fat from the spectral data is possible, but the prediction of the water content was not found to be accurate. However, the detection of MHS using PLS-DA was precise for hyperspectral images from both fillets and whole fish, with lower bounds of 75% and 83% for precision and recall, respectively. Our findings suggest hyperspectral imaging as a suitable technology for the early screening of MHS.Early identification of mushy Halibut syndrome with hyperspectral image analysispublishedVersio

Early identification of mushy Halibut syndrome with hyperspectral image analysis

Mushy Halibut Syndrome (MHS) is a condition that appears in Greenland halibut and manifests itself as abnormally opaque, flaccid and jelly-like flesh. Fish affected by this syndrome show poor meat quality, which results in negative consequences for the fish industry. The research community has not carefully investigated this condition, nor novel technologies for MHS detection have been proposed. In this research work, we propose using hyperspectral imaging to detect MHS. After collecting a dataset of hyperspectral images of halibut affected by MHS, two different goals were targeted. Firstly, the estimation of the chemical composition of the samples (specifically fat and water content) from their spectral data by using constrained spectral unmixing. Secondly, supervised classification using partial least squares discriminant analysis (PLS-DA) was evaluated to identify specimens affected by MHS. The outcomes of our study suggest that the prediction of fat from the spectral data is possible, but the prediction of the water content was not found to be accurate. However, the detection of MHS using PLS-DA was precise for hyperspectral images from both fillets and whole fish, with lower bounds of 75% and 83% for precision and recall, respectively. Our findings suggest hyperspectral imaging as a suitable technology for the early screening of MHS.Early identification of mushy Halibut syndrome with hyperspectral image analysispublishedVersio