Moral Agency

My paper discusses the philosophical issue of animals and ethics. The question that I explore involves the moral status of humans and if humans should receive a higher moral status than other animals. Peter Singer, a moral philosopher, attacks the views of those who wish to give the interests of animals less weight than the interests of human beings. He advocates for a principle known as the equal consideration of interests. This principle states that one should give equal weight in one’s moral decision-making to the like interests of all those affected by one’s actions. Furthermore, the capacity of suffering/pain and enjoyment is the only morally relevant property for equal consideration. If one accepts the principle of equal consideration, then the interests of non-human animals will sometimes be greater than the interests of human beings. For example, humans should not eat meat because the suffering that animals experience from factory farms outweighs the pain we feel from not eating meat. He uses two arguments to support his principle of equal consideration of interests: the argument from marginal cases and the sophisticated inegalitarian argument. I object to Singer’s reasoning with the argument from species normality. This response contends that a being’s moral status depends not on the capacities and abilities he does have but on the capacities and abilities typical for the members of his species. In the end, I argue that the capacity for moral agency should grant all human beings an equal and higher moral status than other non-human animals

Efficient Deep Neural Networks for 3-D Scene Understanding of Unstructured Environments

In the past decade, deep learning (DL) has taken the world by storm. It has produced significant results in a wide variety of applications ranging from self driving cars to natural language processing (NLP). Modern deep learning is built from a number of different algorithms including artificial neural networks (ANN), optimisation algorithms, back-propagation (BP), and varying levels of supervision. Recent advances in GPU hardware, improved availability of large, high quality datasets, and the development of modern training algorithms have all played a pivotal role in the emergence of modern deep learning. These advances have made it easier to train and deploy deeper neural networks that exhibit great generalisation and state-of-the-art, (SOTA), results. Scene understanding is a critical topic in computer vision. In recent years, semantic segmentation and monocular depth estimation have emerged as two key methods for achieving this goal. The combination of these two tasks enables a system to determine both the features in an environment through semantic segmentation, and the 3-D geometric information of those features through depth estimation. This has many practical applications including autonomous driving, robotics, assistive navigation, and virtual reality. Many of these applications require both tasks to be performed simultaneously, however most methods use a separate model for each task which is very computationally resource intensive. Combining multiple tasks into a single model is both computationally efficient and effectively leverages the interrelations between tasks to generate reliable, accurate predictions. The use of a single model for two or more tasks is called multi-task learning (MTL). Despite recent advances in multi-task learning, most MTL models fall short of their single-task counterparts, and often have poor computational resource usage

Stratigraphy, Environments of Deposition, and Mineralogical Characterization of Heavy Minerals from Selected Cretaceous Formations of the Eastern Mississippi Embayment

This thesis examines the mineral suite of undeveloped heavy-mineral deposits in the Cretaceous of the Northern Mississippi Embayment and compares them to the developed deposits of the Atlantic Coastal Plain. The hypothesis presented here is that Cretaceous heavy-mineral deposits of the eastern Mississippi Embayment had the same provenance, the Appalachian Piedmont, as did the younger sediments of the U.S. Atlantic Coast. Kyanite/sillimanite and staurolite were recognized in all samples, and represent strong evidence for an Appalachian Provenance. Alternatively, the overall lack of epidote in the HM suite points away from a Mississippi River related provenance. The dominant heavy minerals found in the Mississippi Embayment samples are ilmenite, leucoxene, zircon, rutile, kyanite/sillimanite, staurolite, and monazite. This suite of heavy minerals compares favorably to those represented along the Atlantic Coastal Plane, and supports an Appalachian Provenance. Southwest trending Paleozoic paleovalleys were likely sedimentation pathways from the Appalachian region

The contribution of fatigue and sleepiness to depression in patients attending the sleep laboratory for evaluation of obstructive sleep apnea

Purpose: A high prevalence of depressive symptomatology has been reported amongst sufferers of obstructive sleep apnea (OSA), but it remains unclear as to whether this is due to their OSA or other factors associated with the disorder. The current study aimed to assess the incidence and aetiology of depression in a community sample of individuals presenting to the sleep laboratory for diagnostic assessment of OSA. Methods: Forty-five consecutive individuals who presented to the sleep laboratory were recruited; of those, 34 were diagnosed with OSA, and 11 were primary snorers with no clinical or laboratory features of OSA. Nineteen control subjects were also recruited. Patients and controls completed the Beck Depression Inventory, the Profile of Mood States (POMS), and the Epworth Sleepiness Scale to assess their mood and sleepiness, prior to their polysomnography. Results: All patients reported significantly more depressive symptoms compared with healthy controls, regardless of their degree of OSA. There were no significant differences between OSA patients and primary snorers on any of the mood and self-rated sleepiness measures. Depression scores were not significantly associated with any of the nocturnal variables. Regression analysis revealed that the POMS fatigue subscale explained the majority of the variance in subjects' depression scores. Conclusions: Fatigue was the primary predictor of the level of depressive symptoms in patients who attended the sleep laboratory, regardless of the level of severity of sleep disordered breathing. When considering treatment options, practitioners should be aware of the concomitant occurrence of depressive symptoms and fatigue in patients presenting with sleep complaints, which may not be due to a sleep disorder

DNA sequencing as a tool to monitor marine ecological status

© 2017 Goodwin, Thompson, Duarte, Kahlke, Thompson, Marques and Caçador. Many ocean policies mandate integrated, ecosystem-based approaches to marine monitoring, driving a global need for efficient, low-cost bioindicators of marine ecological quality. Most traditional methods to assess biological quality rely on specialized expertise to provide visual identification of a limited set of specific taxonomic groups, a time-consuming process that can provide a narrow view of ecological status. In addition, microbial assemblages drive food webs but are not amenable to visual inspection and thus are largely excluded from detailed inventory. Molecular-based assessments of biodiversity and ecosystem function offer advantages over traditional methods and are increasingly being generated for a suite of taxa using a "microbes to mammals" or "barcodes to biomes" approach. Progress in these efforts coupled with continued improvements in high-throughput sequencing and bioinformatics pave the way for sequence data to be employed in formal integrated ecosystem evaluation, including food web assessments, as called for in the European Union Marine Strategy Framework Directive. DNA sequencing of bioindicators, both traditional (e.g., benthic macroinvertebrates, ichthyoplankton) and emerging (e.g., microbial assemblages, fish via eDNA), promises to improve assessment of marine biological quality by increasing the breadth, depth, and throughput of information and by reducing costs and reliance on specialized taxonomic expertise

A Methodological Synthesis of Self-Paced Reading in Second Language Research : Methodological synthesis of SPR tests

Self-paced reading tests (SPRs) are being increasingly adopted by second language (L2) researchers. Using SPR with L2 populations presents specific challenges, and its use is still evolving in L2 research (as well as in first language research, in many respects). Although the topic of several narrative overviews (Keating & Jegerski, 2015; Roberts, 2016), we do not have a comprehensive picture of its usage in L2 research. Building on the growing body of systematic reviews of research practices in applied linguistics (e.g., Liu & Brown, 2015; Plonsky, 2013), we report a methodological synthesis of the rationales, study contexts, and methodological decision making in L2 SPR research. Our comprehensive search yielded 74 SPRs used in L2 research. Each instrument was coded along 121 parameters, including: reported rationales and study characteristics, indicating the scope and nature of L2 SPR research agendas; design and analysis features and reporting practices, determining instrument validity and reliability; and materials transparency, affecting reproducibility and systematicity of agendas. Our findings indicate an urgent need to standardize the use and reporting of this technique, requiring empirical investigation to inform methodological decision making. We also identify several areas (e.g., study design, sample demographics, instrument construction, data analysis, and transparency) where SPR research could be improved to enrich our understanding of L2 processing, reading, and learning

Feed Batch Mixer Box for ISU Beef Nutrition Farm

The Iowa State Beef Nutrition Farm’s mission is to provide facilities and support for research aimed at optimizing nutrition and management of beef cattle in Iowa. Facilities include a modern open-front, 60-pen feedlot, a 7-pen feedlot with an electronic feed intake management system, and a 16-pen open-front feedlot. All pen sizes are adequate for up to six animals. There are 120 acres of improved pasture available for grazing research and several small open lots with fence line feed bunks. A modern, indoor animal handling facility, feed mill and indoor and outdoor feed storage structures are on hand. Our client, Jordan Harding, has tasked us with the goal of increasing efficiency and decreasing time spent feeding cattle daily. Currently, they are using multiple people to feed, and when the feed wagon is out feeding there is wasted downtime for the other workers. This downtime will be filled with our dumper in place. We hope to cut their daily feeding time down from 3 hours to 2 hours. Our solution is to fill their downtime waiting on the feed wagon with a fillable hopper that can then dump into the feed wagon. Using the time that the feed wagon is actually feeding to mix the next ration will save them tremendous overall time and increase their efficiency drastically