Reflective Practice Report Essay Example

Reflective Practice Report Essay Example Reflective Practice Report Essay Reflective Practice Report Essay Essay Topic: Reflective Reflective Report Term 1 Primary School, Alderman Davies When I arrived at the Primary school placement, Alderman Davies I met with one of my supervisors in Reception and gave her my details and showed her my CRB. I then went into the reception classroom with her and we had a chat about what the school expected of me and things I would be doing with the children, the times I start and finish. She discussed the polices and procedures with me but explained they do not give them out because they have too many students and would cost them too much money to print for everyone. She asked me if I had any questions for her and explained who I needed to see if I had any problems. She then took me on a quick tour of the school because I knew where a lot of things were because it was the school I attended when I was at primary school. I went to be introduced to some of the new staff and was introduced to my class teacher and the class I would be working with. There I was given my first task of helping the children draw flowers for harvest to be put up as decorations in the church. Whilst I have been in this placement and in the class I was in with mixed ages I have learned a lot about the children and their needs. I have learned that some children in the class who are the same age may need some more support than others. I have learned to judge when children need help or are just being lazy and done really need it, and I have learned to be a lot more patient. I have also learned that it the children trust you very quick and are very venerable, and copy things they see other people doing. Since being at Alderman Davies’ I have enjoyed every minute of working with the children. They all have completely different personality and can be very cheeky if you let them be. They each of them have began to trust me and trust me to do work with them and to look after them during the day. I have loved doing activities with the children that I had been set to do in college and I know the children enjoyed them too. I had so much fun helping prepare the Christmas concert, helping sort out costumes and helping the children learn all the songs. Making Christmas things with the children was very enjoyable and watching them enjoy themselves made me very happy that I helped put the smile on their faces. The thing I dislike the most about this placement is that Teaching assistants didn’t respect me as much as the teachers did. And it knocked my confidence a bit when I was near them, and the some of the children took it as a cue that they could disrespect me to. However I did not let it ruin my time there and I enjoyed it as much as I possibly could. However I disliked seeing the children upset and thought that some of the dinner time supervisors didn’t deal with some of the problems well enough. My strengths during this placement have been that I could turn up on time and I was very creative in thinking of idea’s for helping the children learn and coming up with games for them to play witch they were learning through doing too. Another strength was that I could build good relationships with the children and staff because I was very confident from the beginning and am easy to talk to. This helped me a lot and made me enjoy my time more. I also encourage children to join in with activities and helped them build their confidence be when they say they couldn’t do something took the time to tell them they can do it and helped them to do it and made sure they were able to before I left them. My only weakness was at the beginning I was very nervous of doing activities with the children because I didn’t know them and had never done it before. With help from kind staff and just gave it my best short and my confidence grew even more and I am now able to explain tasks to the children with confidence. If I was to do this placement again I would do it all the same because I absolutely enjoyed everything and all my time there. However I would not worry about anything and have more confidence at the beginning. Information I would give to students coming behind me would be is have a brilliant time and enjoy every minute because it goes so fast. I would recommend to have confidence because the teachers know how you feel because they were in your position once before. I would advise to be patient and take time to listen to the children and to stay on top of the work because it could mount high on top of you and its worth doing. Ill be sad to leave this placement so enjoy everything.

The Legacy and Works of Lu Xun

The Legacy and Works of Lu Xun Lu Xun (é ² Ã¨ ¿â€¦) was the pen name of Zhou Shuren (å‘ ¨Ã¦  â€˜Ã¤ º º), one of China’s most famous fiction authors, poets, and essayists. He is considered by many to be the father of modern Chinese literature because he was the first serious author to write using modern colloquial language. Lu Xun  died on October 19, 1936, but his works have remained prominent over the years in Chinese culture. Early Life Born on September 25,  1881, in Shaoxing, Zhejiang, Lu Xun was born into a wealthy and well-educated family. However, his grandfather was caught and nearly executed for bribery when Lu Xun was still a child, which sent his family tumbling down the social ladder. This fall from grace and the way once-friendly neighbors treated his family after they had lost their status had a profound effect on the young Lu Xun. When traditional Chinese remedies failed to save his fathers life from an illness, most likely tuberculosis, Lu Xun vowed to study Western medicine and become a doctor. His studies took him to Japan, where one day after class he saw a slide of a Chinese prisoner being executed by Japanese soldiers while other Chinese people were gathered around happily taking in the spectacle. Appalled at his countrymen’s apparent callousness, Lu Xun abandoned his study of medicine and vowed to take up writing with the idea that was no point in curing diseases in Chinese people’s bodies if there was a more fundamental problem in their minds that needed curing. Socio-Political Beliefs The beginning of Lu Xun’s writing career coincided with the beginning of the May 4th Movement, a social and political movement of mostly young intellectuals who were determined to modernize China by importing and adapting Western ideas, literary theories, and medical practices. Through his writing, which was extremely critical of Chinese tradition and strongly advocated modernization, Lu Xun became one of the leaders of this movement. Impact on the Communist Party Lu Xun’s work has been embraced and to a certain extent co-opted by  China’s Communist Party. Mao Zedong held him in very high esteem, although Mao also worked hard to prevent people from taking Lu Xun’s sharp-tongued critical approach when it came to writing about the Party. Lu Xun himself died well before the communist revolution and it’s difficult to say what he would have thought of it. National and International Influence Widely recognized as one of China’s best and most influential authors, Lu Xun remains strikingly relevant to modern China. His socially-critical work is still widely read and discussed in China and references to his stories, characters, and essays abound in everyday speech as well as academia. Many Chinese people can quote from several of his stories verbatim, as they are still taught as part of China’s national curriculum. His work also continues to influence modern Chinese authors  and writers around the world.  Nobel-prize-winning author KenzaburÃ…  Ã…Å'e  reportedly called him the greatest writer Asia produced in the twentieth century. Noted Works His first short story, â€Å"A Madman’s Diary†, made a huge splash in China’s literary world when it was published in 1918 for its clever use of colloquial language juxtaposed with the stilted, hard-to-read classical language that â€Å"serious† authors were meant to write in at the time. The story also turned heads for its extremely critical take on Chinas dependence on tradition, which Lu Xun uses metaphors to compare to cannibalism. A short, satirical novella called â€Å"The True Story of Ah-Q† was published a few years later. In this work, Lu Xun condemns the Chinese psyche through the titular character Ah-Q, a bumbling peasant who constantly considers himself superior to others even as he is relentlessly humiliated and ultimately executed by them. This characterization was on-the-nose enough that the phrase â€Å"the Ah-Q spirit† remains widely used even today, nearly 100 years after the story was first published. Although his early short fiction is among his most memorable work, Lu Xun was a prolific writer and he produced a wide variety of pieces including a large number of translations of Western works, many significant critical essays, and even a number of poems. Though he only lived to be 55, his complete collected works  fill 20 volumes and weigh over 60 pounds. Selected Translated Works The two works mentioned above,  A Madman’s Diary† (ç‹‚ä º ºÃ¦â€" ¥Ã¨ ® °)  and â€Å"The True Story of Ah-Q† (é˜ ¿Qæ ­ £Ã¤ ¼  )  are available to read as translated works.   Other translated works include  The New Year’s Sacrifice,  a powerful short story about women’s rights and, more broadly, the dangers of complacency. Also available is  My Old Home,  a more reflective tale about memory and the ways in which we relate to the past.

Current Australian Issues Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Current Australian Issues - Essay Example They try to persuade the computer novices, who barely have any idea of their computer system and are alarmed by such calls and due to their limited knowledge are inclined towards believing on such scams. The technician asks the consumer to log on to a third party website for the purpose of remote access troubleshooting to the consumer’s PC. The telemarketers go to such extents that they claim they belong to reputed computer organizations such as â€Å"Microsoft† and â€Å"Windows†. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) are looking forward into investigating towards this matter and warning the consumers to remain attentive about such scams (Australian Competition and Consumer Commission). The calls come at all odd times of the day, due to the fact that the telemarketers are not from Australia. A new trend in the type of PC-related scam calls have been observed, in which the caller falsely claims to belong to some foreign government, or from the consumer’s bank and they try to convince the consumers to recover their money that they have lost in previous scams, in return for a moderate fee. This is again a fraud and the consumer ends up paying more money, without any retrieval. PC scam calls are just one genre of the telemarketing abuse. Retrieving consumer’s personal identification details also helps these scammers to provide language-specific calls. The consumer is dealt with the telemarketer of the same foreign language, in the hope of optimized persuasion strategies. Lately consumers have complained of calls by telemarketers for enrolling their kids in tuition centers for specific subjects. Another genre of scam calls relate to the religious preferences of the consumers. Consumers have been asked to join religious centers that preach certain beliefs. The idea behind these telemarketers is to scrape out as much money as they can from the consumers, by stealing their identification details, in order to

Dimensions of Community Environmental Health Essay

Dimensions of Community Environmental Health - Essay Example Alcohol intake is a personal choice and the character exhibits the effect of this poison on his physical strength as well as his personality. Steady drinking of alcohol for a long period of time results in the dependence of the brain and also leads to withdrawal manifestation during episodes of abstinence. Alcoholism is a major health hazard and affects normal brain’s chemistry, blood flow to frontal lobes and the nerve cells. Over time, neurotransmitters such as serotonin, dopamine is depleted leading to mood problems, physical weakness, liver pathologies and increasing dependence (A.D.A.M) Smoking is another example of a voluntary source of health hazard that has an effect both on the environment and public health. The tobacco smoke contains 43 carcinogens which are known out of the thousands of chemicals present in it. Although, smokers are exposed to high incidence of lung cancer, voice changes, and other health hazards, but the people who are exposed to the smoke are also at risk. Lung cancer can also occur in non-smokers who are exposed to the tobacco smoke, and it can lead to childhood disorder such as bronchitis and heart disease (Brownson, Eriksen, Davis and Warner 163). Because of the very strong carcinogenic effects, public health measures have progressed over the years. This has resulted in workplace restrictions to smoking, bans on public smoking and even voluntary measures taken in private industries.

Plow and Cyrus Essay Example for Free

Plow and Cyrus Essay John Deere’s Steel-Tipped Plow and Cyrus McCormicks’s Mechanical Reaper – Deere invented a steel-tipped plow that halved the labor to clear acres to till. Timber for housing and fencing was available in nearby woods, and settlements spread rapidly. McCormick developed the mechanical reaper which harvested grain seven times faster than traditional methods with half the work force and guaranteed that wheat would dominate the Midwestern prairies. American System of Manufacturing, or Interchangeable Parts – Europeans had started to refer to manufacture by interchangeable parts as the â€Å"American System of Manufacturing. The system had many advantages. Traditionally, damage to any part of something ruined the whole thing and no new part would fit. With interchangeable parts, however, replacement parts could be obtained and mass production also occurred. Samuel F. B. Morse – Morse was an American inventor. He contributed to the invention of a single-wire telegraph system bases on European telegraphs. He was also co-inventor of the Morse code, and also an accomplished painter. Catharine Beecher, A Treatise on Domestic Economy – In her widely popular Treatise on Domestic Economy, Beecher told women that technological advances made it their duty to make every house a â€Å"glorious temple† by utilizing space more efficiently. Contagion Theory versus Miasma Theory – The inability of physicians to explain the diseases led to these theories. No one understood that bacteria cause cholera and yellow fever. The contagion theory was that epidemic diseases were spread by touch, whereas the miasmas theory was it resulted from air carried gases from rotten vegetation or dead animals. But neither theory worked. Crawford Long and William T. G. Morton – Long employed sulfuric ether during a surgical operation. Long failed to follow up on his discovery, but four years later, Morton, a dentist, successfully employed sulfuric ether during an operation at MA General Hospital in Boston. Within a few years, ether came into wide use in American surgery. Hydropathy – Hydropathy was known as the â€Å"water cure,† which filtered into the United States from Europe. By the mid-1850s the United States had twenty-seven hydropathic sanatoriums, which used cold baths and wet packs. It helped relieve the pain associated with childbirth and menstruation. Sylvester Graham – Graham propounded a health system that anyone could adopt. Alarmed by the cholera epidemic, Graham counseled changes in dies and regimen as well as total abstinence from alcohol. Soon, he added sexual â€Å"excess† to his list of forbidden indulgences. Phrenology – The belief that each person was master of his or her own destiny underlay not only evangelical religion and popular health movements but also the most popular of the antebellum scientific fads: phrenology. It rested on the idea that the human mind comprised thirty-seven distinct organs, each located in the different part of the brain. James Gordon Bennett, the New York Herald, and the Penny Press – Bennett applied new technology to introduce the penny press. Newspapers could now rely on vast circulations rather than on political subsidies to turn a profit. The New York Sun became America’s first penny newspaper, and Bennett’s New York Herald followed in 1835. Horace Greeley and the New York Tribune Greeley’s New York Tribune pioneered modern financial and political reporting. The relentless snooping of the Tribune’s Washington reporters outrages politicians. In 1848, Tribune correspondents were temporarily barred from the House floor for reporting about Representative Sawyer of Ohio. Astor Place Riot – In 1849, a long-running feud between the leading American actor, Edwin Forrest, and popular British actor William Macready ended with the Astor Place riot in New York City, which left twenty-two people dead. This riot demonstrated the broad popularity of the theater. Minstrel Shows – These shows arose in northern cities when white men in blackface took to the stage to present and evening of songs, dances, and humorous sketches. Minstrelsy borrowed some authentic elements of African-American culture, especially dances. P. T. Barnum and the American Museum – Barnum purchased a run-down museum in NYC, rechristened it the American Museum, and opened a new chapter in the history of popular entertainment. The founders of earlier museums had educational purposes. Barnum, in contrast, made pricking public curiosity the main goal. Washington Irving – When British questioned â€Å"Who ever reads an American book? ,† Americans responded by pointing to Irving, whose Sketch Book contained two famous stories, â€Å"Rip Van Winkle† and â€Å"The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. † Naming hotels and steamboats after Irving, Americans soaked him in applause, but they had to concede that Irving had done much of his best writing while living in England. James Fenimore Cooper – Cooper was the first important figure in this literary upsurge. His most significant innovation was to introduce a distinctively American fictional character, the frontiersman Natty Bumppo. Edgar Allan Poe – Poe wrote both fictional and poetry and was a major contributor to the American Renaissance. He set several of his short stories in Europe; as one critic has noted, â€Å"His art could have been produced as easily had he been born in Europe. † American Renaissance – The Renaissance was a flowering of literature. In 1800, American authors accounted for a negligible proportion of the output of American publishers. By 1830, 40 percent of the books published in the United States were written by Americans; by 1850 this had increased to 75 percent. Not only were Americans writing more books; increasingly, they sought to depict the features of their nation in literature and art. Henry David Thoreau – Thoreau was representative of the younger Emersonians. He was more of a doer and was adventurous in action. At one point, he went to jail rather than to pay his poll tax. This revenue, he knew, would support the war in Mexico, which he viewed as part of a southern conspiracy to extend slavery. The experience led Thoreau to write â€Å"Civil Disobedience† in which he defended a citizen’s right to disobey unjust laws. Ralph Waldo Emerson and â€Å"The American Scholar† – Emerson emerged in the late 1830s as the most influential spokesman for American literary nationalism. He announced his address â€Å"The American Scholar. † The time had come for Americans to trust themselves. Let â€Å"the single man plant himself indomitably on his instincts and there abide,† he proclaimed. Transcendentalism – It’s a philosophical movement that developed in the 1830s and 1840s in the Eastern region of the United States as a protest to the general state of culture and society. Among their core beliefs was the inherent goodness of both man and nature. They believed that society and its institutions ultimately corrupted the purity of the individual. Margaret Fuller – Her status as an intellectual woman distanced her from conventional society. Disappointed that his first child was not a boy, her Harvard educated father determined to give Margaret the sort of education young men would have acquired at Harvard. Fuller turned transcendentalism into an occupation of sorts. Nathaniel Hawthorne – Hawthorne was a major contributor to the American Renaissance. He wrote the famous novel, The Scarlett Letter along with The House of the Seven Gables and The Marble Faun in Rome. He ignored Emerson’s call to write about everyday experiences of their fellow Americans. Ironically, their conviction that the lives of ordinary Americans provided inadequate materials for fiction led them to create a uniquely American fiction marked less by the description of the complex social relationships of ordinary life than by the analysis or moral dilemmas and psychological states. Walt Whitman – Self-taught and in love with virtually everything about America except slavery, Whitman left school at eleven and became a printer’s apprentice and later a journalist and editor for various newspapers in Brooklyn, Manhattan, and New Orleans. A familiar figure at Democratic Party functions, he marched in party parades and put his pen to the service of its antislavery wing. Herman Melville – Melville was another key contributor to the American Renaissance who primarily wrote fiction. He did draw materials and themes from his own experiences as a sailor and from the lore of the New England whaling industry, but for his novels, be picked the exotic setting of islands in the South Seas. He wrote the famous Moby-Dick. Thomas Cole, Asher Durand, Frederic Church, and the Hudson River School – The Hudson River School flourished from the 1820s to the 1870s. Cole, Durand, and Church best represented more than fifty painters. They painted scenes of the region around the Hudson River, a waterway that Americans compared in majesty to the Rhine. Lyceums – This is a category of educational institution defined within the education system of many countries, mainly in Europe. The definition varies between countries; usually it is a type of secondary school. Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux – In 1858, New York City chose a plan drawn by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux for its proposed Central Park. Olmstead eventually became the park’s chief architect. They both wanted the park to look as much like the countryside as possible, showing nothing of the surrounding city.

The Use of Recombinant DNA :: Papers

The Use of Recombinant DNA I agree that recombinant DNA benefits humans only to a certain extent though. During the late 1960s and early 1970s a series of independent discoveries made in rapid succession yielded a new technology whereby humans have the capability to manipulate and direct the very evolution of life itself. This is accomplished through the process of gene splicing (Recombinant DNA). There are four essential elements of the process: a method of breaking and joining DNA molecules from different sources, a gene carrier that can replicate both itself and the foreign DNA, a means of introducing the foreign DNA into a functional bacteria cell, and a method of selecting from a large population the cells which carry the foreign DNA. Using procedures like recombinant DNA, many human genes have been cloned in E. coli or in yeast. This was made possible for the first time to produce unlimited amounts of human proteins. Cultured cells (E. coli, yeast, mammalian cells) transformed with the human gene are being used to manufacture: insulin for diabetics, human growth hormone (GH) GH from domestic mammals like cows and pigs does not work in humans. So for many years, the only source of GH for therapy was that taken out from the glands of human cadavers. But this supply was shut off when several patients died from a rare neurological disease attributed to contaminated glands. Now, thanks to recombinant DNA technology, recombinant human GH is available. While a great benefit to patients suffering form GH deficiency, there has also been pressure to use it to stimulate growth in youngsters who have no deficiency but whose parents want them to grow up tall, erythropoietin (EPO) People with failing kidneys can be kept alive by dialysis. But dialysis only cleanses the blood of wastes. Without a source of EPO, these patients suffer from anaemia. Now, thanks to recombinant DNA technology, recombinant human EPO is available to treat these patients, for treating anaemia, tissue plasminogen activator (TPA) for dissolving blood clots, angiostatin and endostatin for trials as anti-cancer

African American Injustice Essay

â€Å"In the eyes of white Americans, being black encapsulates your identity. † In reading and researching the African American cultural group, this quote seemed to identify exactly the way the race continues to still be treated today after many injustices in the past. It is astonishing to me that African Americans can still stand to be treated differently in today’s society. In reading â€Å"Blacks in America†, Andrew Hacker states that â€Å"being black in America has consequences in areas of: wealth, identity, raising children, occupational opportunities, place of residence, and treatment in the criminal justice system. † To be honest, and I feel bad saying that I already knew this was happening to African Americans. I have heard stories of blacks not getting jobs; regardless of how qualified they are for the position, because of the color of their skin. I have heard stories, and even witness black children getting picked on in school because of the simple fact that they are black. I watched a video in school where a black family moved into a white neighborhood, and before long all the white families had moved out because they didn’t want a black family in their neighborhood. This was confirmed by Hacker in my research in the quote, â€Å"Almost all residential areas are entirely black or white. † I have also seen videos of African American men getting beaten by white arresting officers, and have heard stories of many black men being stereotyped by policemen. This must be why Hacker states â€Å"When white people hear the cry, â€Å"the police are coming! † it almost always means, â€Å"Help is on the way. † However blacks cannot make the same assumption. † These are all reports and events that I think the average American has seen before, but yet most people, including myself, continue to just shrug of and ignore. I guess it’s something that I might have subconsciously accepted, or maybe refused to think more deeply about. In reading and researching, I reaffirmed knowledge that I refused to take a greater note of. I wouldn’t say I learned anything new, because I knew what I wanted to focus on. A quote from Andrew Hacker’s article summarizes the above best, â€Å"In the eyes of white Americans, being black encapsulates your identity. † It may be easy to tell how I am going to focus this anthology. I am going to focus it on the injustices that African Americans continue to face in the United States today. That being, I know exactly what I need to get out of my interviewees, but it is probably a sensitive subject for some of the people I need to interview. I am not black, and I don’t know what it feels like to face this discrimination in everyday life. I can understand the tenderness that African Americans must feel then, when revealing and talking about their experiences with discrimination. I would think then, that it must be especially sensitive to talk about with a person from the race that they receive this everyday discrimination. It will be interesting to hear all the different types of prejudice that my interviewees have received throughout their lives. I would imagine that it ranges from just a look, or the way white Americans act around them, to voiced and physical altercations between themselves and white Americans. Hacker at times seems to be speaking directly to African Americans as he describes these altercations, â€Å"So many of the contacts you have with them (white Americans) are stiff and uneasy, hardly worth the effort. † But to me, that is exactly what the problem is. Why would it not be worth the effort? The first step to take for the uneasiness between the two races to cease to exist is for us (all people) to stop seeing color because once we act differently around the other is where all the problems seem to start. The second step is to make these contacts worth the effort. If we choose to continue to stay in our own comfortable circle of race, when is the problem ever going to end? The answer is never. My opinion as a white 18 year old is that most of the blame lies on the white race. Imagine being eyed every time you go into a store, having your car searched for no reason, or greeted warily at restaurants all because the color of your skin is different. We ignore this daily discrimination because no cares enough anymore to take notice that it happens every hour, every day somewhere in the United States. Will it ever stop? Not until we each take the steps to make it. A recent census commercial I’ve seen said â€Å"We (United States) can’t move forward until you mail it back. † I believe that our country can’t move forward and truly be great until we make sure these daily discriminations are eliminated from our society. In this project, I will interview African Americans on their personal experiences with discrimination, how they handle it, and if they think anything can be done about this problem. Sources: Andrew. 1999. â€Å"Blacks in America. † Pp. 160-168 in The Meaning of Sociology, 6th ed. , edited by Joel Charon. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. A Time to Kill. Dir. Joel Schumacher. 1996. â€Å"African American History. † University of Washington Libraries. Web. 02 Apr. 2010. .

MegaCities Essay Essay

Mega Cities are cities that have a population of more than 8 million and are characterised by the challenges they face, including issues involving the informal economy, unemployment, poor sanitation and shelter. These issues are largely prominent in these cities due to rapid urban growth and a lack of resources. In many cases action has been taken by national governments and non-governmental organisations (NGO’s) to combat and reduce the impact of these issues, however In order for these strategies to be effective they need to fit 3 primary criteria, the solution must be community based, cost effective and sustainable economically and environmentally. Strategies such as micro financing.. Etc. have been adopted to resolve these challenged. A primary challenge facing many mega cities is the population’s heavy reliance on the informal economy as a means of income. The informal economy is a sector of unregulated work and with this comes high unemployment rates and a lack of jobs to support the ever-increasing population. Jobs in the informal economy are particularly prominent in Dhaka, Bangladesh, where 65% of all jobs are found in this sector. Jobs in the informal economy pose a threat to mega cities and their population as workers are not protected and are open to exploitation (e.g. Child labour) and people employed informally pay no tax (e.g. Street vendors, rickshaw drivers) leading to a reduction in the governments revenue. A number of strategies have been undertaken in order to transform informal work into the formal economy, including Micro financing. Micro financing involves NGO’s giving out small loans (approximately $US200), which provide people with money to formalise their business. There are a number of NGO’s that undertake this strategy, including Opportunity International, which is an Australian charity, operating in manila, targeting particularly impoverished communities. Access to these loans is based on a persons standing in the community and once the business begins to sustain itself loans must be repaid. The outcome of this process is a formalised business, which then contributes to government  beneficially by providing it with revenue. This strategy to combat the prominence of the informal economy has been particularly successful, adheres to the three evaluation criteria and provides users with lifetime skills and an income, which could potentially improve their living standards/quality of life. Another challenge faced by a large majority of mega cities is access to shelter, due to population growth in mega cities being too extreme for sufficient supply of housing. This in turn leads to the creation of informal housing, such as squatter settlements, which are generally formed on unoccupied unwanted land, such as next to rail lines or sewerage systems. Informal housing is extremely prominent in developing countries such as India, where 500,000 people live on the pavement in Kolkata with at least 4 million more living in squatter settlements; as well as 1 million people living in cemeteries in Cairo, and  ¼ of the Philippines population residing in slums. This informal housing creates a number of problems for its residents and government; it lacks basic services (sewerage, electricity, water), leading to unsanitary living conditions. There is a lack of tenure, which is the legal right to occupy land, which stops residents from wanting to improve property, insecurity for people and also extremely high crime rates particularly in the Favelas of Rio de Janiero where the police are unable to patrol, due to extreme gang violence. NGO’s and governments have undertaken strategies to improve the issue of lack of access to shelter, including the Kolkata Bustee Improvement Project, a joint initiative between government and non-government organisations. This is a site and service program meaning that the project takes an existing site and provides it with necessary services, such as sanitation, electricity etc. This program in turn reduces the cost burden on local government and creates jobs by incorporating the local community into the work. This movement has tried to stop India’s slum clearance policy, which frees up NGO’s to be able to assist the extreme urban poor. This movement has proved to be extremely successful in improving the shelter situation in Kolkata as it improves the living standard of squatter settlement dwellers, provides jobs and skills to the local community (therefore adding to the formal not informal economy) and also allows NGO’s to be able to assist the poor as they were previously  restricted by government policies. Another benefit is that it is cost effective because it aims to improve existing settlements and creates tenure. Access to sanitation is another key challenge faced by many Mega Cities that is, providing safe food and drinking water and sewerage management. Due to increasing populations, inadequate and ancient sewerage systems and also lack of access to fresh water many Mega Cities face sanitation issues. This issue is particularly prominent in cities such as Manila, where only 11% of people have access to a sewerage system, Karachi at 20% and Dhaka at 18% of the population. Water Borne diseases are particularly prominent in megacities, such as Cholera, Dysentery and Typhoid. Furthermore the disposal of solid waste in Mega cities has lead to issues involving contamination of groundwater and creating Vernon, this is common of Jakarta where only  ¼ of all rubbish gets collected. To combat the issue of sanitation, local governments and NGO’s have established very effective, low-tech strategies, such as the Pour Flush Toilet. This initiative is a relatively cheap response to the needs of unplanned urban settlements in mega cities. A pour flush toilet has a water seal that avoids the problems associated with odour and insects. However its effectiveness is limited by the fact that the system is not suitable in cities where the groundwater table is close to the surface, which is the case in many mega cities, including Mumbai and Kolkata in India and Dhaka in Bangladesh. Also, pour flush toilets can produce substantial quantities of heavily contaminated wastewater which can require substantial downstream infrastructure to avoid severe environmental and public health problems. Despite the disadvantages of this strategy it has proved to be a very successful short term solution to the issue of sanitation and is widely used in Mega Cities around the world, due to the fact that they are simple to use and can be kept clean fairly easily. Mega Cities face many challenges; largely due to their high population increase rate. They therefore need to develop a number of solutions and strategies to combat these prominent issues, such as the informal economy, access to shelter and access to sanitation. If action is not taken to confront these issues they will only become more consequential, leading to more deaths and further environmental and land degradation. Governments and  NGO’s continually need to create strategies to solve these issues and their efforts so far have proved to be extremely beneficial in improving the quality of life of residents of Mega cities, as they fit the three primary criteria needed for solutions to be effective.

Rostows Stages of Economic Growth and Development

Rostow's Stages of Economic Growth and Development Geographers often seek to categorize places using a scale of development, frequently dividing nations into the developed and developing, first world and third world, or core and periphery. All of these labels are based on judging a countrys development, but this raises the question: what exactly does it mean to be developed, and why have some countries developed while others have not? Since the beginning of the twentieth century, geographers and those involved with the vast field of Development Studies have sought to answer this question, and in the process, have come up with many different models to explain this phenomenon. W.W. Rostow and the Stages of Economic Growth One of the key thinkers in twentieth-century Development Studies was W.W. Rostow, an American economist, and government official. Prior to Rostow, approaches to development had been based on the assumption that modernization was characterized by the Western world (wealthier, more powerful countries at the time), which were able to advance from the initial stages of underdevelopment. Accordingly, other countries should model themselves after the West, aspiring to a modern state of capitalism and liberal democracy. Using these ideas, Rostow penned his classic Stages of Economic Growth in 1960, which presented five steps through which all countries must pass to become developed: 1) traditional society, 2) preconditions to take-off, 3) take-off, 4) drive to maturity and 5) age of high mass consumption. The model asserted that all countries exist somewhere on this linear spectrum, and climb upward through each stage in the development process: Traditional Society: This stage is characterized by a subsistent, agricultural based economy, with intensive labor and low levels of trading, and a population that does not have a scientific perspective on the world and technology.Preconditions to Take-off: Here, a society begins to develop manufacturing, and a more national/international, as opposed to regional, outlook.Take-off: Rostow describes this stage as a short period of intensive growth, in which industrialization begins to occur, and workers and institutions become concentrated around a new industry.Drive to Maturity: This stage takes place over a long period of time, as standards of living rise, the use of technology increases, and the national economy grows and diversifies.Age of High Mass Consumption: At the time of writing, Rostow believed that Western countries, most notably the United States, occupied this last developed stage. Here, a countrys economy flourishes in a capitalist system, characterized by mass productio n and consumerism. Rostows Model in Context Rostows Stages of Growth model is one of the most influential development theories of the twentieth century. It was, however, also grounded in the historical and political context in which he wrote. Stages of Economic Growth was published in 1960, at the height of the Cold War, and with the subtitle A Non-Communist Manifesto, it was overtly political. Rostow was fiercely anti-communist and right-wing; he modeled his theory after western capitalist countries, which had industrialized and urbanized. As a staff member in President John F. Kennedys administration, Rostow promoted his development model as part of U.S. foreign policy. Rostows model illustrates a desire not only to assist lower-income countries in the development process but also to assert the United States influence over that of communist Russia. Stages of Economic Growth in Practice: Singapore Industrialization, urbanization, and trade in the vein of Rostows model are still seen by many as a roadmap for a countrys development. Singapore is one of the best examples of a country that grew in this way and is now a notable player in the global economy. Singapore is a southeast Asian country with a population of over five million, and when it became independent in 1965, it did not seem to have any exceptional prospects for growth. However, it industrialized early, developing profitable manufacturing and high-tech industries. Singapore is now highly urbanized, with 100% of the population considered urban. It is one of the most sought-after trade partners in the international market, with a higher per-capita income than many European countries. Criticisms of Rostows Model As the Singapore case shows, Rostows model still sheds light on a successful path to economic development for some countries. However, there are many criticisms of his model. While Rostow illustrates faith in a capitalist system, scholars have criticized his bias towards a western model as the only path towards development. Rostow lays out five succinct steps towards development and critics have cited that all countries do not develop in such a linear fashion; some skip steps or take different paths. Rostows theory can be classified as top-down, or one that emphasizes a trickle-down modernization effect from urban industry and western influence to develop a country as a whole. Later theorists have challenged this approach, emphasizing a bottom-up development paradigm, in which countries become self- sufficient through local efforts, and urban industry is not necessary. Rostow also assumes that all countries have a desire to develop in the same way, with the end goal of high mass cons umption, disregarding the diversity of priorities that each society holds and different measures of development. For example, while Singapore is one of the most economically prosperous countries, it also has one of the highest income disparities in the world. Finally, Rostow disregards one of the most fundamental geographical principals: site and situation. Rostow assumes that all countries have an equal chance to develop, without regard to population size, natural resources, or location. Singapore, for instance, has one of the worlds busiest trading ports, but this would not be possible without its advantageous geography as an island nation between Indonesia and Malaysia. In spite of the many critiques of Rostows model, it is still one of the most widely cited development theories and is a primary example of the intersection of geography, economics, and politics. Sources: Binns, Tony, et al. Geographies of Development: An Introduction to Development Studies, 3rd ed. Harlow: Pearson Education, 2008. Singapore. CIA World Factbook, 2012. Central Intelligence Agency. 21 August 2012.

All About the Speed of Light and What It Measures

All About the Speed of Light and What It Measures Light moves through the universe at the fastest speed astronomers can measure. In fact, the speed of light is a cosmic speed limit, and nothing is known to move faster. How fast does light move? This limit can be measured and it also helps define our understanding of the universes size and age. What Is Light: Wave or Particle? Light travels fast, at a velocity of 299, 792, 458 meters per second. How can it do this? To understand that, its helpful to know what light actually is and thats largely a 20th-century discovery. The nature of light was a great mystery for centuries. Scientists had trouble grasping the concept of its wave and particle nature.  If it was a wave what did it propagate through? Why did it appear to travel at the same speed in all directions? And, what can the speed of light tell us about the cosmos?  It wasnt until Albert Einstein described this theory of special relativity in 1905 it all came into focus. Einstein argued that space and time were relative and that the speed of light was the constant that connected the two. What Is the Speed of Light? It is often stated that the speed of light is constant and that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light. This isnt entirely accurate. The value of 299,792,458 meters per second (186,282 miles per second) is the speed of light in a vacuum.  However, light actually slows down as it passes through different media. For instance, when it moves through glass, it slows down to about two-thirds of its speed in a vacuum.  Even in air, which is nearly a vacuum, light slows down slightly. As it moves through space, it encounters clouds of gas and dust, as well as gravitational fields, and those can change the speed a tiny bit. The clouds of gas and dust also absorb some of the light as it passes through. This phenomenon has to do with the nature of light, which is an electromagnetic wave. As it propagates through a material its electric and magnetic fields disturb the charged particles that it comes in contact with. These disturbances then cause the particles to radiate light at the same frequency, but with a phase shift. The sum of all these waves produced by the disturbances will lead to an electromagnetic wave with the same frequency as the original light, but with a shorter wavelength and, hence a slower speed. Interesting, as fast as light moves, its path can be bent as it passes by regions in space with intense gravitational fields. This is fairly easily seen in galaxy clusters, which contain a lot of matter (including dark matter), which warps the path of light from more distant objects, such as quasars. Gravitational lensing and how it works. Light from a distant object passes by a closer object with a strong gravitational pull. The light is bent and distorted and that creates images of the more distant object.   NASA Lightspeed and Gravitational Waves Current theories of physics predict that gravitational waves also travel at the speed of light, but this is still being confirmed as scientists study the phenomenon of gravitational waves from colliding black holes and neutron stars. Otherwise, there are no other objects that travel that fast. Theoretically, they can get close to the speed of light, but not faster. One exception to this may be space-time itself. It appears that distant galaxies are moving away from us faster than the speed of light. This is a problem that scientists are still trying to understand. However, one interesting consequence of this is that a travel system based on the idea of a warp drive. In such a technology, a spacecraft is at rest relative to space and its actually space that moves, like a surfer riding a wave on the ocean. Theoretically, this might allow for superluminal travel. Of course, there are other practical and technological limitations that stand in the way, but its an interesting science-fiction idea that is getting some scientific interest.   Travel Times for Light One of the questions that astronomers get from members of the public is: how long would it take light to go from object X to Object Y? Light gives them a very accurate way to measure the size of the universe by defining distances. Here are a few of the common ones distance measurements: The Earth to the Moon: 1.255 secondsThe Sun to Earth: 8.3 minutesOur Sun to the next closest star: 4.24 yearsAcross our Milky Way  galaxy: 100,000 yearsTo the closest  spiral galaxy (Andromeda): 2.5 million yearsLimit of the observable universe to Earth: 13.8 billion years Interestingly, there are objects that are beyond our ability to see simply because the universe IS expanding, and some are over the horizon beyond which we cannot see. They will never come into our view, no matter how fast their light travels. This is one of the fascinating effects of living in an expanding universe.   Edited by Carolyn Collins Petersen

Business Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words - 25

Business - Essay Example The employees working in the campus has the facility that they can have free food any time they want, they can give their clothes for dry cleaning and can use the gym in order to maintain their health (Emerson, 2012). The employees have the facility that they can work on their own idea in the 20% of the time that is allocated for them to become innovative and do whatever they want so that they can expand as well. Google allows the employees to take leave for a year or two without being paid, but this way they can try to launch their own idea (Emerson, 2012). The company gives all the employees special attention and apart of basic benefits, some other benefits are also given to the employees that are on-site medical facility, Japanese washrooms, swimming pools, conference bike, free haircut, ball pits etc (Emerson, 2012) . Emerson, R. (2012, January 31). Googles Best Benefits: The Top 7 Perks Google Offers Employees. Retrieved June 30, 2012, from http://www.huffingtonpost.com:

Geographical information system and agriculture Research Paper

Geographical information system and agriculture - Research Paper Example In the long run, commonly referenced data can be superimposed to determine relationships between data components. Geographic information system (GIS) software applies relational database management technologies to consign a series of attributes to every spatial characteristic (Longley et al 86). Ordinary aspect identification keys are used to associate the spatial and attribute data among tables. For example, a soil polygon can be associated to a chain of database tables that explains chemical composition, its mineral, crop yield, slope, land use suitability, and other features. Another aspect of Geographic information system (GIS) is that it provides the capability to coalesce series of data into a multiple data layer that may later be a base layer in the database. For instance, demography, slope, wetlands, hydrography, soils and land use can be merged to develop a solitary layer of proper hazardous waste storage sites (Longley et al 140). These data, in turn, may be integrated into the listing database of local government and applied for regulatory and planning evaluations.GIS software normally allows for two kinds of data. Some use raster data i.e. satellite imagery while others use vectors to represent features on the surface of the earth. Most systems allow for complete integration of both types of data (Pierce and David, 11). A GIS can be used to explain basic locational questions such as what is positioned at a given level on the earth surface; or where is the exact element located? At the same time, soils data across the entire watershed can be asked to determine the distribution of regions with hydric soils of huge than 100 acres and are linked to key river system (Pierce and David, 15). Geographic information system (GIS) is becoming the dais of choice for mixing and analyzing enormous range of data in the field of agriculture due to the ability to analyze those data flow and display