Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Digital Commons Network™

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

2019

Discipline
Institution
Keyword
Publication
Publication Type
File Type

Articles 164101 - 164130 of 165280

Full-Text Articles in Entire DC Network

Branding And Marketing For An Environmental Nonprofit Organization: Revitalizing A Brand In Southern Illinois, Erik Fitzgerald Jan 2019

Branding And Marketing For An Environmental Nonprofit Organization: Revitalizing A Brand In Southern Illinois, Erik Fitzgerald

Research Papers

Due to its ‘social image’ nonprofits have avoided marketing in the past, focusing their efforts on fundraising and promotional activities. Growing competition within the nonprofit sector has forced these organizations to re-evaluate how they think about marketing. Marketing- oriented nonprofits are out-performing their competitors who have been slow to adapt to this increasingly competitive environment. This project takes a look at a local nonprofit, the Friends of the Shawnee National Forest, that has yet to adopt this marketing orientation. This research gives insight into how a small environmental nonprofit in southern Illinois can use branding and marketing strategies to increase …

Go to article

Delivery, Facilitas, And Copia : Job Market Preparation And The Revival Of The Fifth Canon., Joseph Turner Jan 2019

Delivery, Facilitas, And Copia : Job Market Preparation And The Revival Of The Fifth Canon., Joseph Turner

Faculty and Staff Scholarship

This essay argues that English Studies departments should implement training programs in oral delivery strategies for graduate students seeking tenure track employment. A sample a 13-week training program, modeled on elements of classical rhetorical pedagogy, can help students develop and refine stills in oral delivery necessary for academic job interviews.

Go to article

Dismantling Structural Inequality: Lock Ups, Systemic Chokeholds, And Race-Based Policing - A Symposium Summary, Cedric Merlin Powell, Laura R. Mcneal Jan 2019

Dismantling Structural Inequality: Lock Ups, Systemic Chokeholds, And Race-Based Policing - A Symposium Summary, Cedric Merlin Powell, Laura R. Mcneal

Faculty and Staff Scholarship

The prominence of the carceral state in American society serves to undermine basic principles of democracy and justice, disproportionately displacing people of color and excluding them from all viable avenues of citizenship.

Go to article

Personal Universes: A Solution To The Multi-Agent Value Alignment Problem, Roman V. Yampolskiy Jan 2019

Personal Universes: A Solution To The Multi-Agent Value Alignment Problem, Roman V. Yampolskiy

Faculty and Staff Scholarship

AI Safety researchers attempting to align values of highly capable intelligent systems with those of humanity face a number of challenges including personal value extraction, multi-agent value merger and finally in-silico encoding. State-of-the-art research in value alignment shows difficulties in every stage in this process, but merger of incompatible preferences is a particularly difficult challenge to overcome. In this paper we assume that the value extraction problem will be solved and propose a possible way to implement an AI solution which optimally aligns with individual preferences of each user. We conclude by analyzing benefits and limitations of the proposed approach.

Go to article

An Explainable Autoencoder For Collaborative Filtering Recommendation, Pegah Sagheb Haghighi, Olurotimi Seton, Olfa Nasraoui Jan 2019

An Explainable Autoencoder For Collaborative Filtering Recommendation, Pegah Sagheb Haghighi, Olurotimi Seton, Olfa Nasraoui

Faculty and Staff Scholarship

Autoencoders are a common building block of Deep Learning architectures, where they are mainly used for representation learning. They have also been successfully used in Collaborative Filtering (CF) recommender systems to predict missing ratings. Unfortunately, like all black box machine learning models, they are unable to explain their outputs. Hence, while predictions from an Autoencoderbased recommender system might be accurate, it might not be clear to the user why a recommendation was generated. In this work, we design an explainable recommendation system using an Autoencoder model whose predictions can be explained using the neighborhood based explanation style. Our preliminary work …

Go to article

The Frequency Of Dust Lanes In Edge-On Spiral Galaxies Identified By Galaxy Zoo In Kids Imaging Of Gama Targets, Benne W. Holwerda, Lee Kelvin, Ivan Baldry, Chris Lintott, Mehmet Alpaslan, Kevin A. Pimbblet, Jochen Liske, Thomas Kitching, Steven Bamford, Jelte De Jong, Maciej Bilicki, Andrew Hopkins, Joanna Bridge, R. Steele, A. Jacques, S. Goswami, S. Kusmic, W. Roemer, S. Kruk, C. C. Popescu, K. Kuijken, L. Wang, A. Wright Jan 2019

The Frequency Of Dust Lanes In Edge-On Spiral Galaxies Identified By Galaxy Zoo In Kids Imaging Of Gama Targets, Benne W. Holwerda, Lee Kelvin, Ivan Baldry, Chris Lintott, Mehmet Alpaslan, Kevin A. Pimbblet, Jochen Liske, Thomas Kitching, Steven Bamford, Jelte De Jong, Maciej Bilicki, Andrew Hopkins, Joanna Bridge, R. Steele, A. Jacques, S. Goswami, S. Kusmic, W. Roemer, S. Kruk, C. C. Popescu, K. Kuijken, L. Wang, A. Wright

Faculty and Staff Scholarship

Dust lanes bisect the plane of a typical edge-on spiral galaxy as a dark optical absorption feature. Their appearance is linked to the gravitational stability of spiral disks; the fraction of edge-on galaxies that displays a dust lane is a direct indicator of the typical vertical balance between gravity and turbulence: a balance struck between the energy input from star formation and the gravitational pull into the plane of the disk. Based on morphological classifications by the Galaxy Zoo project on the Kilo Degree Survey (KiDS) imaging data in the Galaxy and Mass Assembly (GAMA) fields, we explore the relation …

Go to article

Quantum Metalanguage And The New Cognitive Synthesis, Alexey V. Melkikh, Andrei Khrennikov, Roman V. Yampolskiy Jan 2019

Quantum Metalanguage And The New Cognitive Synthesis, Alexey V. Melkikh, Andrei Khrennikov, Roman V. Yampolskiy

Faculty and Staff Scholarship

Problems with mechanisms of thinking and cognition in many ways remain unresolved. Why are a priori inferences possible? Why can a human understand but a computer cannot? It has been shown that when creating new concepts, generalization is contradictory in the sense that to be created concepts must exist a priori, and therefore, they are not new. The process of knowledge acquisition is also contradictory, as it inevitably involves recognition, which can be realized only when there is an a priori standard. Known approaches of the framework of artificial intelligence (in particular, Bayesian) do not determine the origins of knowledge, …

Go to article

Emergence Of Addictive Behaviors In Reinforcement Learning Agents, Vahid Behzadan, Roman Yampolskiy, Arslan Munir Jan 2019

Emergence Of Addictive Behaviors In Reinforcement Learning Agents, Vahid Behzadan, Roman Yampolskiy, Arslan Munir

Faculty and Staff Scholarship

This paper presents a novel approach to the technical analysis of wireheading in intelligent agents. Inspired by the natural analogues of wireheading and their prevalent manifestations, we propose the modeling of such phenomenon in Reinforcement Learning (RL) agents as psychological disorders. In a preliminary step towards evaluating this proposal, we study the feasibility and dynamics of emergent addictive policies in Q-learning agents in the tractable environment of the game of Snake. We consider a slightly modified version of this game, in which the environment provides a “drug” seed alongside the original “healthy” seed for the consumption of the snake. We …

Go to article

Intelligence, Complexity, And Individuality In Sheep, Lori Marino, Debra Merskin Jan 2019

Intelligence, Complexity, And Individuality In Sheep, Lori Marino, Debra Merskin

Animal Sentience

Domestic sheep (Ovis aries) are among the earliest animals domesticated for human use. They are consumed worldwide as mutton, hogget, and lamb, kept as wool and milk producers, and used extensively in scientific research. The popular stereotype is that sheep are docile, passive, unintelligent, and timid, but a review of the research on their behavior, affect, cognition, and personality reveals that they are complex, individualistic, and social.

Go to article

Sacrificial Lambs, Clive Phillips Jan 2019

Sacrificial Lambs, Clive Phillips

Animal Sentience

Sheep evolved from the mouflon as mountain animals, able to escape predation by leaping between rock ledges. Their defense was their agility. Humans brought them to the plains, where the agility was less useful, but their lack of aggression, speed or weaponry against predators made them a prime target to become one of man’s meat providers. A perfect animal in many ways, with extraordinary perceptive powers and some remarkable cognitive skills, they are often treated with complete disregard for their welfare. Yet sheep themselves won’t tell us this, for a sheep that alerted others to its weakness really would be …

Go to article

Pulling The Wool From Our Eyes, Jennifer Vonk Jan 2019

Pulling The Wool From Our Eyes, Jennifer Vonk

Animal Sentience

Marino & Merskin review evidence of the complexity of sheep cognition, concluding that researchers ought to feel sheepish about misrepresenting ovine cognitive capacities. However, the failure to situate the data in critical context risks pulling the wool over readers’ eyes.

Go to article

Is Knowing Enough To Change Human Attitudes And Actions?, Liv Baker Jan 2019

Is Knowing Enough To Change Human Attitudes And Actions?, Liv Baker

Animal Sentience

Marino & Merskin present evidence on key aspects of cognition, such as theory of mind, learning, emotional valence, and sociality, to make a convincing argument that sheep are due consideration as individual sentient beings. With this information, what will it take to produce a real, meaningful shift in our attitudes and actions towards other animals, including a species as disadvantaged as sheep? What else do we need to know?

Go to article

Reflections On Sheep Rearing, Joyce D'Silva Jan 2019

Reflections On Sheep Rearing, Joyce D'Silva

Animal Sentience

Sheep rearing has an incredibly long history. Sometimes this alone can give credibility and status to a human practice. In the twenty-first century, it may be time to reassess our treatment of sheep and their place in nature. “Just because we’ve always done it” no longer has validity by itself. There are many other human practices which used to be accepted widely in certain societies and which we now may find abhorrent. With sheep intelligence now rightly regarded as an acceptable area of research within the academic community, it is a good time to reflect on our treatment of these …

Go to article

Casting A Sheep’S Eye On Science, David M. Peña-Guzmán Jan 2019

Casting A Sheep’S Eye On Science, David M. Peña-Guzmán

Animal Sentience

Marino & Merskin review evidence that sheep are not just passive and reactive creatures. They have personalities that vary from individual to individual and endure over time. It follows that we must rethink what it means to study them scientifically.

Go to article

Far More To Sheep Than Meets The Casual Eye, Bernard Rollin Jan 2019

Far More To Sheep Than Meets The Casual Eye, Bernard Rollin

Animal Sentience

Marino & Merskin’s survey of the cognitive and social capacities of sheep is an eye-opener about the individuality and emotionality of this most maligned of all farm animals. My own eyes had already been opened by an adopted orphaned lamb, so much more like a dog as a companion animal than the mindless robot I had been conditioned to expect. I am morally certain that Marino & Merskin’s survey will have a similar effect on readers open to changing their minds.

Go to article

On The Sentience Of Sheep And Other Useful Objects, Ila France Porcher Jan 2019

On The Sentience Of Sheep And Other Useful Objects, Ila France Porcher

Animal Sentience

The nature of sheep has been in plain view ever since the animals were domesticated about 10,000 years ago. Why their intelligence, individuality, and emotional complexity has been ignored is a question that goes well beyond Marino & Merskin’s timely target article. Not only has cognitive bias in favour of religious ideas in biology been involved, but the territorial nature of our own species is implicated as well. The tendency of Homo sapiens to see others in terms of “us” and “them” has resulted in a history of racism, speciesism, and general domination of any others that could be fitted …

Go to article

Sentient Animals Do Not Just Live In The Present, John Webster Jan 2019

Sentient Animals Do Not Just Live In The Present, John Webster

Animal Sentience

Sheep are particularly well-equipped with the cognitive and emotional skills appropriate to their phenotype and natural environment. These include spatial memory, the benefits of safety in numbers, and the ability to recognise special individuals in large flocks by sight and by sound. Marino & Merskin’s target article reviews convincing evidence on whether sheep are more or less clever than other mammalian species. Sheep are very good at being sheep. But sentient animals do not just live in the present. Their emotional state is not simply dictated by events of the moment. If they learn, they can cope; if not, they …

Go to article

Positive Sentience Is Underrated, Teya Brooks Pribac Jan 2019

Positive Sentience Is Underrated, Teya Brooks Pribac

Animal Sentience

My commentary focuses on two aspects of ovine (well-)being considered in the review: the developmental context and (un)fulfilled potentialities.

Go to article

Sheeple? The Need For More Research On Sheep Cognition, Michael Colombo, Damian Scarf Jan 2019

Sheeple? The Need For More Research On Sheep Cognition, Michael Colombo, Damian Scarf

Animal Sentience

Marino & Merskin (2019) provide a comprehensive review of the cognitive abilities of sheep. If research with other animals is any guide, there may be justification for the view that the abilities of sheep have been underestimated, and their review will likely stimulate more research into sheep cognition.

Go to article

Sheep In Aesop’S And Phaedrus’S Fables, Matteo Colombo, Chiara Raucea Jan 2019

Sheep In Aesop’S And Phaedrus’S Fables, Matteo Colombo, Chiara Raucea

Animal Sentience

Sheep feature in various animal fables. Marino & Merskin suggest that “we” view sheep as “docile, passive, unintelligent, and timid,” but animal fables do not support this view. In Aesop’s and Phaedrus’s fables, sheep are a primary target of injustice; but they are not passive targets. Sheep endure injustice actively and honestly. They are intelligent, aware and outspoken about their own condition.

Go to article

Using Sheep Psychology To Guide Sheep Policy, Ralph Adolphs Jan 2019

Using Sheep Psychology To Guide Sheep Policy, Ralph Adolphs

Animal Sentience

Marino & Merskin’s valuable review of the literature on sheep cognition shows how entrenched common views of these animals’ mental lives are disputed by the research literature. Yet the evidence they muster faces three challenges that their target article does not discuss: (1) the behavioral tasks are strongly anthropocentric; (2) neuroscientific data are absent; and (3) applications are not discussed. I touch on all three of these here.

Go to article

Why Are Sheep Sheepish? How Perception Affects Animal Stereotyping, Robert G. Franklin Jr. Jan 2019

Why Are Sheep Sheepish? How Perception Affects Animal Stereotyping, Robert G. Franklin Jr.

Animal Sentience

Marino & Merskin present compelling evidence that many stereotypes of sheep are incorrect. One factor that may play an important role in animal stereotyping is the physical appearance of animals, which can directly lead to stereotyping through automatic mental processes. Sheep have a round and babyish appearance that directly evokes judgments of warmth and docility. Depictions of sheep in art, and especially cartoons, reinforce this stereotype.

Go to article

Sheep Complexity Outside The Laboratory, Cheryl Abbate Jan 2019

Sheep Complexity Outside The Laboratory, Cheryl Abbate

Animal Sentience

Marino & Merskin’s review shows that sheep are intelligent and highly social but their methodology has some shortcomings. I describe five problems with reviewing only the academic and scientific literature and suggest how one might provide an even more compelling case for the complexity of sheep minds.

Go to article

Cognition, Emotion, Personality And The Conservation And Management Of Wild Ungulates, Rob Found Jan 2019

Cognition, Emotion, Personality And The Conservation And Management Of Wild Ungulates, Rob Found

Animal Sentience

Increasing public understanding of the complexity of wild ungulates can improve animal welfare and advance global conservation efforts of these keystone species. Unfortunately, shaping public opinion on wild species is challenging because personal experience with wildlife is declining, popular education is still biased towards the predator instead of the prey, and scientific research is more difficult to conduct on wild ungulates compared to those on farms, in zoos, or otherwise in captivity. Nevertheless, studies of cognition, individuality, and intelligence of wild ungulates are increasing. I briefly highlight some major results from my own work on complexity in wild elk, illustrating …

Go to article

What Should We Do About Sheep? The Role Of Intelligence In Welfare Considerations, Heather Browning Jan 2019

What Should We Do About Sheep? The Role Of Intelligence In Welfare Considerations, Heather Browning

Animal Sentience

Marino & Merskin (2019) demonstrate that sheep are more cognitively complex than typically thought. We should be cautious in interpreting the implications of these results for welfare considerations to avoid perpetuating mistaken beliefs about the moral value of intelligence as opposed to sentience. There are, however, still important ways in which this work can help improve sheeps’ lives.

Go to article

Yes, Sheep Are Smart But The Moral Question Is Still “Can They Suffer?”, Clare Palmer, Peter Sandøe Jan 2019

Yes, Sheep Are Smart But The Moral Question Is Still “Can They Suffer?”, Clare Palmer, Peter Sandøe

Animal Sentience

Sheep may be more complex and intelligent than we traditionally believed, but knowing this is unlikely to change human attitudes to sheep significantly; nor is it strongly relevant to their moral status. However, knowing more about what sheep are like could help to improve sheep welfare.

Go to article

Time To Vary The Formula, Jon Mallatt Jan 2019

Time To Vary The Formula, Jon Mallatt

Animal Sentience

In the past few years, Marino and her colleagues have written a series of comprehensive and helpful review articles on the cognitive, emotional, and social complexity of pigs, chickens, cows, and most recently, sheep. These articles are similarly structured, even formulaic, which has benefits but also limitations. Here, I point out the limitations in order to suggest new directions and contributions for the authors in the future.

Go to article

Adding Sheep To The Spectrum Of Comparative Psychology, James King Jan 2019

Adding Sheep To The Spectrum Of Comparative Psychology, James King

Animal Sentience

Marino & Merskin’s comprehensive review of cognitive complexity in sheep is a laudable and important contribution to comparative psychology. It is also valuable because it shows promising directions for future research on this neglected species. The relatively small number of neurons in the bovid cerebral cortex indicates that sheep cognitive performance on traditional measures of complex learning is limited. Nevertheless, the social and emotional complexity of sheep underscores the importance of further research into domains including personality and psychological well-being.

Go to article

Our Ambivalent Stereotypes Of Sheep, Veronica Sevillano Jan 2019

Our Ambivalent Stereotypes Of Sheep, Veronica Sevillano

Animal Sentience

Marino & Merskin’s target article contrasts our ambivalent social ideas about sheep with the empirical evidence of their complex capacities, particularly cognitive ones. To extend our understanding of human-sheep relations, I discuss human social perception of animals and structural variables that predict our stereotypes.

Go to article

Can A Mirror Capture The Self?, Cynthia Willett Jan 2019

Can A Mirror Capture The Self?, Cynthia Willett

Animal Sentience

Is the mirror a reliable indicator of self-awareness for any species, whether sheep or human? Taking a cue from feminist, phenomenological, and cross-cultural philosophy, a relational self rather than a reflective one might better capture what is at stake for the lives of social animals and for science.

Go to article

First Prev Next Last