Presumptuous aim attribution, conformity, and the ethics of artificial social cognition

Imagine you are casually browsing an online bookstore, looking for an interesting novel. Suppose the store predicts you will want to buy a particular novel: the one most chosen by people of your same age, gender, location, and occupational status. The store recommends the book, it appeals to you, and so you choose it. Central to this scenario is an automated prediction of what you desire. This article raises moral concerns about such predictions. More generally, this article examines the ethics of artificial social cognition—the ethical dimensions of attribution of mental states to humans by artificial systems. The focus is presumptuous aim attributions, which are defined here as aim attributions based crucially on the premise that the person in question will have aims like superficially similar people. Several everyday examples demonstrate that this sort of presumptuousness is already a familiar moral concern. The scope of this moral concern is extended by new technologies. In particular, recommender systems based on collaborative filtering are now commonly used to automatically recommend products and information to humans. Examination of these systems demonstrates that they naturally attribute aims presumptuously. This article presents two reservations about the widespread adoption of such systems. First, the severity of our antecedent moral concern about presumptuousness increases when aim attribution processes are automated and accelerated. Second, a foreseeable consequence of reliance on these systems is an unwarranted inducement of interpersonal conformity

Studies on the epidemiology of diabetes in Pacific populations

Bibliography: leaves 192-207Thesis (M.D.) -- University of Adelaide, Dept. of Community Medicine, 198

Frozen Animals

pages 27-4

Playoff Uncertainty, Match Uncertainty and Attendance at Australian National Rugby League Matches

This paper develops a new simulation-based measure of playoff uncertainty and investigates its contribution to modelling match attendance compared to other variants of playoff uncertainty in the existing literature. A model of match attendance that incorporates match uncertainty, playoff uncertainty, past home-team performance and other relevant control variables is fitted to Australian National Rugby League data for seasons 2004-2008 using fixed effects estimation. The results suggest that playoff uncertainty and home-team success are more important determinants of match attendance than match uncertainty. Alternative measures of playoff uncertainty based on points behind the leader, although more ad hoc, also appear able to capture the effects of playoff uncertainty.playoff uncertainty, match uncertainty, sports league attendance, Australian National Rugby League, fixed effects estimation

Excavating the post-political: Mining, water and public participation in Arizona, USA

Contributing to recent debates in democratic theory and human geography around the ‘post-political’ nature of contemporary modes of governance, this thesis challenges the extent to which deliberative, participatory spaces of decision-making lend democratic agency to those impacted by resource development projects. It examines the contention that these spaces are overdetermined within a discursive field biased toward the interests of corporate power and capital accumulation. The research connects three ‘registers’ of theoretically-informed enquiry: the aforementioned macro-level theorisations of what constitutes democracy and ‘the political’; the meso-level questions around the implementation of participatory practice within NEPA; and micro-level empirical situations where the above have recently come into play. Empirically, the research takes one case study of a proposed copper mine in southern Arizona, United States. Specifically, it focuses on the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) process mandated by the United States’ 1969 National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). Central to this example are the links between two types of resource, hard rock minerals and water – the large-scale realisation of which has been fundamental to development in this semi-arid region – and the ‘hydrosocial’ ecologies and economies in which they are entwined.Employing a mixture of extensive and intensive methods within a broad critical realist framework, the research centres on the content of public comments in response to the Draft Environmental Impact Statement for the proposed mine and a series of in-depth interviews with key informants. At the meso-level, it analyses the nature of competing discourses articulated in the NEPA EIS public commenting process, and the extent to which the institutional response to participatory process corresponds to normative conceptions of substantive democratic participation. At the micro-level, it aims to understand the role that spatial relations of social, political and economic power play in the trajectory of the process. Finally, the thesis considers how the case in question speaks back to macro-level theoretical debates around post-politics and post-democracy

Fortilin Binds IRE1α and Prevents ER Stress from Signaling Apoptotic Cell Death

The endoplasmic reticulum, the cytoplasmic organelle that matures a massive amount of nascent secretory polypeptides, is particularly sensitive to stress. Endoplasmic reticulum stress causes unfolded proteins to populate the organelle, eliciting the unfolded protein response. During the unfolded protein response, GRP78—an endoplasmic reticulum master stress regulator—detaches from three endoplasmic reticulum stress sensors (IRE1α, PERK, and ATF6) and allows them to activate the apoptotic signaling pathway. Fortilin, a pro-survival molecule, is known to inhibit apoptosis by binding and inhibiting p53, but its role in endoplasmic reticulum stress-induced apoptosis remains unknown. Here, we report that fortilin directly interacts with the cytoplasmic domain of IRE1α, inhibits both kinase and endoribonuclease (RNase) activities of the stress sensor, and protects cells against apoptotic cell death at both cellular and whole animal levels. Our data support a role of fortilin in the unfolded protein response and its potential participation in human diseases caused by unfolded protein response

The presence and influence of glacier surging around the Geladandong ice caps, North East Tibetan Plateau

This study was supported by the Strategic Priority Research Program of Chinese Academy of Sciences (XDA20100300).Many glaciers and ice caps on the Tibetan Plateau have retreated and lost mass in recent years in response to temperature increases, providing clear evidence of the impact of climate change on the region. There is increasing evidence that many of the glaciers on the Tibetan Plateau have also shown periodically dynamic behaviour in the form of glacier surging and some even catastrophic collapse events. In this study, we examine the prevalence of glacier surging at the Geladandong ice caps, North East Tibetan Plateau, to better understand the role of surge events in the evolution of glacier mass loss budgets. Using glacier surface elevation change data over the period 1969–2018 and glacier surface velocity data from the ITS_LIVE dataset, we find that 19 outlet glaciers of the ice caps are of surge-type. Our multi-temporal measurements of glacier mass balance show that surge-type glacier mass budgets vary depending on the portion of the surge-cycle captured by geodetic data. At the regional level, pre- and post-surge glacier mass loss variability does not bias regional mass budget estimates, but enhanced, or suppressed, mass loss estimates are likely when small groups of glaciers are examined. Our results emphasise the importance of accurate surge-type glacier inventories and the need to maximise geodetic data coverage over glacierised regions known to contain surge-type glaciers.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Automated classification of three-dimensional reconstructions of coral reefs using convolutional neural networks

© The Author(s), 2020. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Hopkinson, B. M., King, A. C., Owen, D. P., Johnson-Roberson, M., Long, M. H., & Bhandarkar, S. M. Automated classification of three-dimensional reconstructions of coral reefs using convolutional neural networks. PLoS One, 15(3), (2020): e0230671, doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0230671.Coral reefs are biologically diverse and structurally complex ecosystems, which have been severally affected by human actions. Consequently, there is a need for rapid ecological assessment of coral reefs, but current approaches require time consuming manual analysis, either during a dive survey or on images collected during a survey. Reef structural complexity is essential for ecological function but is challenging to measure and often relegated to simple metrics such as rugosity. Recent advances in computer vision and machine learning offer the potential to alleviate some of these limitations. We developed an approach to automatically classify 3D reconstructions of reef sections and assessed the accuracy of this approach. 3D reconstructions of reef sections were generated using commercial Structure-from-Motion software with images extracted from video surveys. To generate a 3D classified map, locations on the 3D reconstruction were mapped back into the original images to extract multiple views of the location. Several approaches were tested to merge information from multiple views of a point into a single classification, all of which used convolutional neural networks to classify or extract features from the images, but differ in the strategy employed for merging information. Approaches to merging information entailed voting, probability averaging, and a learned neural-network layer. All approaches performed similarly achieving overall classification accuracies of ~96% and >90% accuracy on most classes. With this high classification accuracy, these approaches are suitable for many ecological applications.This study was funded by grants from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation (BMH, BR2014-049; https://sloan.org), and the National Science Foundation (MHL, OCE-1657727; https://www.nsf.gov). The funders had no role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript

Characterising the evolution of Himalayan debris covered glaciers.

The majority of the 20,000 glaciers found in the Himalaya are in a state of negative mass balance, and have been for decades. Broad spatial trends in ice mass loss have been identified by large scale geodetic mass balance studies, but regional averaging of mass loss data has masked catchment or glacier scale variability. This thesis has the broad aim of examining the catchment scale variability of ice mass loss, in order to identify factors that might promote, or inhibit, more substantial ice mass loss from the region in the future. Ice mass loss rates from Everest region glaciers were calculated using the geodetic approach, over the period 2000-2015, and compared depending on glacier terminus type. Lake-terminating glaciers were found to have lost 32% more ice mass than land-terminating glaciers, and maximum surface lowering rates of lake-terminating glaciers peaked at more than twice the rate of land-terminating counterparts. Glacier hypsometry was found to be contrasting at the catchment scale, and predicted accumulation area ratio (AARs) change in response to different RCP warming scenarios emphasises the importance of considering glacier area-altitude distribution in future ice loss estimates. A more detailed assessment of the evolving geometry, dynamics and ice loss rates of nine lake-terminating glaciers suggested two phases of glacier-lake interaction may exist. A phase of dynamic lake-terminating glacier retreat was evident where terminus proximal surface lowering rates were high (up to 3 m a-1), ice front retreat rates were steady or accelerating, and surface velocities increased (by up to 10 m a-1, between 1999 and 2015). Alternatively, a phase of retreat typified by surface lowering rates akin to land-terminating glaciers (~1 m a-1), where ice front retreat rates were steady or diminishing, and where surface velocity reduction occurred. The dynamic phase of ice loss observed on lake-terminating glaciers in the Everest region is not of the same magnitude as larger waterter-minating glaciers found in other glacierised regions, probably because of the topographic confinement of host glaciers and the dominance of resistive stresses, but the now populous nature of glacial lakes in the region means the potential for amplified future ice loss exists. The impact of long-term ice loss on the topographic characteristics of debris covered glacier surfaces was also examined. Ice cliff and supraglacial pond expansion was identified as the main driver of topographic change on slow flowing, land-terminating glaciers. A more pitted surface topography of greater relief developed on most glaciers, which has implications for the energy balance at the glacier surface, and for supraglacial hydrology. Overall, the results of this thesis emphasise the need to incorporate a range of glacier dynamics scenarios and melt processes into simulations of future ice loss in the Himalaya