Global Development Politics Policy Brief Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Global Development Politics Policy Brief - Essay Example How can the international society continue to maintain sustainable development of its population without inducing further effects of climate change? This question continues to remain a nightmare to experts in environment and economist, alike. Experts mandated to ensure practical climate change policies face this similar challenge. The policy options identified, discussed and proposed include applying costs and benefits analysis exhibition to the public. This, in turn, would inform the public on the effects of climate change on health and environment including the economy. Analysis and exhibition of climate change effects would evoke initiatives for early mitigation of climate change among the population. The second proposal is to ensure reduced level of emissions, on a global scale, would help address climate change. These include agreement on acceptable amount emitted by countries (Posner & Weisbach 2010, p.3). The third proposal is to find means that would change the human behavior and help reduce human causes of this global environmental threat. To sustain the ever-escalating human population growth rate and the ability to support their demands for natural resources, without inducing climate change-causing processes, we recommend initiatives that would correct human norms and behavior to control development. Situation brief Why should the world address climate change? The apparent pursuit to implement sustainable development raises concerns on the necessity to have a succinct policy regulation that control developmental effects. World organizations including institutions sets up by the United Nations face the challenge of ensuring developments that guarantee an uncompromised future. Climate change is among the major challenges that are at the focus of issues that call for redress and attention from the world community, through a united approach. Most conventions and treaties set by international bodies, since the 1972 meeting at Stockholm have climate change as one of the priority challenges. The scope of climate change implications on diverse sectors including the economy, food production and health makes it a grim issue that is better when addressed than left to escalate. Noteworthy is the concern that climate change implications are not region-specific but a matter that is all-inclusive of the entire world society. Scientists point at an alarming change in world temperatures and an anticipation of potential increase in ice melt rate. What are the challenges to existing climate change control policies? Existing policy initiatives to control the rate of emission have little, so to say, effectiveness. The policy frameworks available to suppress over emission from development activities, in developed countries especially, have failed. The carbon credit initiatives tend to assure the world population of insignificant influence and effects. Climate finance is another unsuccessful idea that has least impact in controlling climate change. T he current situation calls for a workable framework that would leave the world population staying in a clean atmosphere that is free of contamination and related effects. The high extent of uncertainty in predicting possible impacts of the alteration of world climatic conditions is the key threat to existing policies. Policy discussion Climate change economists

Respnse paper after I observe dental hygienist work in a dental office Essay

Respnse paper after I observe dental hygienist work in a dental office - Essay Example In the process, he nearly held each breath, being certain of the spots on which to fix the needle through and at which correct angle, as if at this critical stage, the worker would not afford any degree of hesitation between the acts of injecting and of coordinating the jaw thereafter. The dental hygienist occurred to exhibit intense focus while he still managed to utter firm but gentle words of command to draw in the patient’s full trust and attention toward the procedures conducted. As I observed, this step is important in order to establish confidence for the patient and the hygienist took control of pre-conditioning the subject under treatment so that positive initial impression is built up before the actual dentist got in charge of the main course of action. Likewise, the patient seemed to have essentially gained insight of the rest of the dental work to be carried out for her welfare and at the time she could have associated the dentist’s quality of practice to th at of the dental hygienist who dealt with her firsthand.

Animal Extinction Essay Example for Free

Animal Extinction Essay Animal Extinction the greatest threat to mankind In the final stages of dehydration the body shrinks, robbing youth from the young as the skin puckers, eyes recede into orbits, and the tongue swells and cracks. Brain cells shrivel and muscles seize. The kidneys shut down. Blood volume drops, triggering hypovolemic shock, with its attendant respiratory and cardiac failures. These combined assaults disrupt the chemical and electrical pathways of the body until all systems cascade toward death. Such is also the path of a dying species. Beyond a critical point, the collective body of a unique kind of mammal or bird or amphibian or tree cannot be salvaged, no matter the first aid rendered. Too few individuals spread too far apart, or too genetically weakened, are susceptible to even small natural disasters: a passing thunderstorm; an unexpected freeze; drought. At fewer than 50 members, populations experience increasingly random fluctuations until a kind of fatal arrhythmia takes hold. Eventually, an entire genetic legacy, born in the beginnings of life on earth, is removed from the future. Scientists recognise that species continually disappear at a background extinction rate estimated at about one species per million per year, with new species replacing the lost in a sustainable fashion. Occasional mass extinctions convulse this orderly norm, followed by excruciatingly slow recoveries as new species emerge from the remaining gene-pool, until the world is once again repopulated by a different catalogue of flora and fauna. From what we understand so far, five great extinction events have reshaped earth in cataclysmic ways in the past 439 million years, each one wiping out between 50 and 95 per cent of the life of the day, including the dominant life forms; the most recent event killing off the non-avian dinosaurs. Speciations followed, but an analysis published in Nature showed that it takes 10 million years before biological diversity even begins to approach what existed before a die-off. Today were living through the sixth great extinction, sometimes known as the Holocene extinction event. We carried its seeds with us 50,000 years ago as we migrated beyond Africa with Stone Age blades, darts, and harpoons, entering pristine Ice Age ecosystems and changing them forever by wiping out at least some of the unique megafauna of the times, including, perhaps, the sabre-toothed cats and woolly mammoths. When the ice retreated, we terminated the long and biologically rich epoch sometimes called the Edenic period with assaults from our newest weapons: hoes, scythes, cattle, goats, and pigs. But, as harmful as our forebears may have been, nothing compares to whats under way today. Throughout the 20th century the causes of extinction habitat degradation, overexploitation, agricultural monocultures, human-borne invasive species, human-induced climate-change increased exponentially, until now in the 21st century the rate is nothing short of explosive. The World Conservation Unions Red List a database measuring the global status of Earths 1. million scientifically named species tells a haunting tale of unchecked, unaddressed, and accelerating biocide. When we hear of extinction, most of us think of the plight of the rhino, tiger, panda or blue whale. But these sad sagas are only small pieces of the extinction puzzle. The overall numbers are terrifying. Of the 40,168 species that the 10,000 scientists in the World Conservation Union have assessed, one in four mammals, one in eight birds, one in three amphibians, one in three conifers and other gymnosperms are at risk of e xtinction. The peril faced by other classes of organisms is less thoroughly analysed, but fully 40 per cent of the examined species of planet earth are in danger, including perhaps 51 per cent of reptiles, 52 per cent of insects, and 73 per cent of flowering plants. By the most conservative measure based on the last centurys recorded extinctions the current rate of extinction is 100 times the background rate. But the eminent Harvard biologist Edward O Wilson, and other scientists, estimate that the true rate is more like 1,000 to 10,000 times the background rate. The actual annual sum is only an educated guess, because no scientist believes that the tally of life ends at the 1. 5 million species already discovered; estimates range as high as 100 million species on earth, with 10 million as the median guess. Bracketed between best- and worst-case scenarios, then, somewhere between 2. 7 and 270 species are erased from existence every day. Including today. We now understand that the majority of life on Earth has never been and will never be known to us. In a staggering forecast, Wilson predicts that our present course will lead to the extinction of half of all plant and animal species by 2100. You probably had no idea. Few do. A poll by the American Museum of Natural History finds that seven in 10 biologists believe that mass extinction poses a colossal threat to human existence, a more serious environmental problem than even its contributor, global warming; and that the dangers of mass extinction are woefully underestimated by almost everyone outside science. In the 200 years since French naturalist Georges Cuvier first floated the concept of extinction, after examining fossil bones and concluding the existence of a world previous to ours, destroyed by some sort of catastrophe, we have only slowly recognised and attempted to correct our own catastrophic behaviour. Some nations move more slowly than others. In 1992, an international summit produced a treaty called the Convention on Biological Diversity that was subsequently ratified by 190 nations all except the unlikely coalition of the United States, Iraq, the Vatican, Somalia, Andorra and Brunei. The European Union later called on the world to arrest the decline of species and ecosystems by 2010. Last year, worried biodiversity experts called for the establishment of a scientific body akin to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to provide a united voice on the extinction crisis and urge governments to action. Yet, despite these efforts, the Red List, updated every two years, continues to show metastatic growth. There are a few heartening examples of so-called Lazarus species lost and then found: the wollemi pine and the mahogany lider in Australia, the Jerdons courser in India, the takahe in New Zealand, and, maybe, the ivory-billed woodpecker in the United States. But for virtually all others, the Red List is a dry country with little hope of rain, as species ratchet down the listings from secure to vulnerable, to endangered, to critically endangered, to extinct. All these disappearing species are part of a fragile membrane of organisms wrapped around the Earth so thinly, writes Wilson, that it cannot be seen edgewise from a space shuttle, yet so internally complex that most species composing it remain undiscovered. We owe everything to this membrane of life. Literally everything. The air we breathe. The food we eat. The materials of our homes, clothes, books, computers, medicines. Goods and services that we cant even imagine well someday need will come from species we have yet to identify. The proverbial cure for cancer. The genetic fountain of youth. Immortality. Mortality. The living membrane we so recklessly destroy is existence itself. Biodiversity is defined as the sum of an areas genes (the building blocks of inheritance), species (organisms that can interbreed), and ecosystems (amalgamations of species in their geological and chemical landscapes). The richer an areas biodiversity, the tougher its immune system, since biodiversity includes not only the number of species but also the number of individuals within that species, and all the inherent genetic variations lifes only army against the diseases of oblivion. Yet its a mistake to think that critical genetic pools exist only in the gaudy show of the coral reefs, or the cacophony of the rainforest. Although a hallmark of the desert is the sparseness of its garden, the orderly progression of plants and the understated camouflage of its animals, this is only an illusion. Turn the desert inside out and upside down and youll discover its true nature. Escaping drought and heat, life goes underground in a tangled overexuberance of roots and burrows reminiscent of a rainforest canopy, competing for moisture, not light. Animal trails criss-cross this subterranean realm in private burrows engineered, inhabited, stolen, shared and fought over by ants, beetles, wasps, cicadas, tarantulas, spiders, lizards, snakes, mice, squirrels, rats, foxes, tortoises, badgers and coyotes. To survive the heat and drought, desert life pioneers ingenious solutions. Coyotes dig and maintain wells in arroyos, probing deep for water. White-winged doves use their bodies as canteens, drinking enough when the opportunity arises to increase their bodyweight by more than 15 per cent. Black-tailed jack rabbits tolerate internal temperatures of 111F. Western box turtles store water in their oversized bladders and urinate on themselves to stay cool. Mesquite grows taproots more than 160ft deep in search of moisture. These life-forms and their life strategies compose what we might think of as the body of the desert, with some species the lungs and others the liver, the blood, the skin. The trend in scientific investigation in recent decades has been toward understanding the interconnectedness of the bodily components, i. e. the effect one species has on the others. The loss of even one species irrevocably changes the desert (or the tundra, rainforest, prairie, coastal estuary, coral reef, and so on) as we know it, just as the loss of each human being changes his or her family forever. Nowhere is this better proven than in a 12-year study conducted in the Chihuahuan desert by James H Brown and Edward Heske of the University of New Mexico. When a kangaroo-rat guild composed of three closely related species was removed, shrublands quickly converted to grasslands, which supported fewer annual plants, which in turn supported fewer birds. Even humble players mediate stability. So when you and I hear of this years extinction of the Yangtze river dolphin, and think, how sad, were not calculating the deepest cost: that extinctions lead to co-extinctions because most living things on Earth support a few symbionts, while keystone species influence and support myriad plants and animals. Army ants, for example, are known to support 100 known species, from beetles to birds. One of the most alarming developments is the rapid decline not just of species but of higher taxa, such as the class Amphibia, the 00-million-year-old group of frogs, salamanders, newts and toads hardy enough to have preceded and then outlived most dinosaurs. Biologists first noticed die-offs two decades ago, and, since then, have watched as seemingly robust amphibian species vanished in as little as six months. The causes cover the spectrum of human environmental assaults, including rising ultraviolet radiation from a thinning ozone layer, increases in po llutants and pesticides, habitat loss from agriculture and urbanisation, invasions of exotic species, the wildlife trade, light pollution, and fungal diseases. Sometimes stressors merge to form an unwholesome synergy; an African frog brought to the West in the 1950s for use in human pregnancy tests likely introduced a fungus deadly to native frogs. Meanwhile, a recent analysis in Nature estimated that, in the past 20 years, at least 70 species of South American frogs had gone extinct as a result of climate change. In a 2004 analysis published in Science, Lian Pin Koh and his colleagues predict that an initially modest co-extinction rate will climb alarmingly as host extinctions rise in the near future. Graphed out, the forecast mirrors the rising curve of an infectious disease, with the human species acting all the parts: the pathogen, the vector, the Typhoid Mary who refuses culpability, and, ultimately, one of up to 100 million victims. Rewilding is bigger, broader, and bolder than humans have thought before. Many conservation biologists believe its our best hope for arresting the sixth great extinction. Wilson calls it mainstream conservation writ large for future generations. This is because more of what weve done until now protecting pretty landscapes, attempts at sustainable development, community-based conservation and ecosystem management will not preserve biodiversity through the critical next century. By then, half of all species will be lost, by Wilsons calculation. To save Earths living membrane, we must put its shattered pieces back together. Only megapreserves modelled on a deep scientific understanding of continent-wide ecosystem needs hold that promise. What I have been preparing to say is this, wrote Thoreau more than 150 years ago. In wildness is the preservation of the world. This, science finally understands. The Wildlands Project, the conservation group spearheading the drive to rewild North America by reconnecting remaining wildernesses (parks, refuges, national forests, and local land trust holdings) through corridors calls for reconnecting wild North America in four broad megalinkages: along the Rocky Mountain spine of the contine nt from Alaska to Mexico; across the arctic/boreal from Alaska to Labrador; along the Atlantic via the Appalachians; and along the Pacific via the Sierra Nevada into the Baja peninsula. Within each megalinkage, core protected areas would be connected by mosaics of public and private lands providing safe passage for wildlife to travel freely. Broad, vegetated overpasses would link wilderness areas split by roads. Private landowners would be enticed to either donate land or adopt policies of good stewardship along critical pathways. Its a radical vision, one the Wildlands Project expects will take 100 years or more to complete, and one that has won the project a special enmity from those who view environmentalists with suspicion. Yet the core brainchild of the Wildlands Project that true conservation must happen on an ecosystem-wide scale is now widely accepted. Many conservation organisations are already collaborating on the project, including international players such as Naturalia in Mexico, US national heavyweights like Defenders of Wildlife, and regional experts from the Southern Rockies Ecosystem Project to the Grand Canyon Wildlands Council. Kim Vacariu, the South-west director of the USs Wildlands Project, reports that ranchers are coming round, one town meeting at a time, and that there is interest, if not yet support, from the insurance industry and others who face the reality of car-wildlife collisions daily. At its heart, rewilding is based on living with the monster under the bed, since the big, scary animals that frightened us in childhood, and still do, are the fierce guardians of biodiversity. Without wolves, wolverines, grizzlies, black bears, mountain lions and jaguars, wild populations shift toward the herbivores, who proceed to eat plants into extinction, taking birds, bees, reptiles, amphibians and rodents with them. A tenet of ecology states that the world is green because carnivores eat herbivores. Yet the big carnivores continue to die out because we fear and hunt them and because they need more room than we preserve and connect. Male wolverines, for instance, can possess home ranges of 600 sq m. Translated, Greater London would have room for only one. The first campaign out of the Wildlands Projects starting gate is the spine of the continent, along the mountains from Alaska to Mexico, today fractured by roads, logging, oil and gas development, grazing, ski resorts, motorised back-country recreation and sprawl. The spine already contains dozens of core wildlands, including wilderness areas, national parks, national monuments, wildlife refuges, and private holdings. On the map, these scattered fragments look like debris falls from meteorite strikes. Some are already partially buffered by surrounding protected areas such as national forests. But all need interconnecting linkages across public and private lands farms, ranches, suburbia to facilitate the travels of big carnivores and the net of biodiversity that they tow behind them. The Wildlands Project has also identified the five most critically endangered wildlife linkages along the spine, each associated with a keystone species. Grizzlies already pinched at Crowsnest Pass on Highway Three, between Alberta and British Columbia, will be entirely cut off from the bigger gene pool to the north if a larger road is built. Greater sage grouse, Canada lynx, black bears and jaguars face their own lethal obstacles further south. But by far the most endangered wildlife-linkage is the borderland between the US and Mexico. The Sky Islands straddle this boundary, and some of North Americas most threatened wildlife jaguars, bison, Sonoran pronghorn, Mexican wolves cross, or need to cross, here in the course of their lifes travels. Unfortunately for wildlife, Mexican workers cross here too. Men, women, and children, running at night, one-gallon water jugs in hand. The problem for wildlife is not so much the intrusions of illegal Mexican workers but the 700-mile border fence proposed to keep them out. From an ecological perspective, it will sever the spine at the lumbar, paralysing the lower continent. Here, in a nutshell, is all thats wrong with our treatment of nature. Amid all the moral, practical, and legal issues with the border fence, the biological catastrophe has barely been noted. Its as if extinction is not contagious and we wont catch it. If, as some indigenous people believe, the jaguar was sent to the world to test the will and integrity of human beings, then surely we need to reassess. Border fences have terrible consequences. One between India and Pakistan forces starving bears and leopards, which can no longer traverse their feeding territories, to attack villagers. The truth is that wilderness is more dangerous to us caged than free and has far more value to us wild than consumed. Wilson suggests the time has come to rename the environmentalist view the real-world view, and to replace the gross national product with the more comprehensive genuine progress indicator, which estimates the true environmental costs of farming, fishing, grazing, mining, smelting, driving, flying, building, paving, computing, medicating and so on. Until then, its like keeping a ledger recording income but not expenses. Like us, the Earth has a finite budget.

Contradicting Theories On Choking Under Pressure Psychology Essay

Contradicting Theories On Choking Under Pressure Psychology Essay For several decades, the relationship between stress and performance gained much attention. Numerous psychological researches provided evidence for the anecdotal phenomenon that pressure negatively affects cognitive and motor control during performance. This phenomenon is known as choking under pressure, defined as performing more poorly than expected, in situations where performance pressure is at a maximum, given at ones skill level. Contradicting theories on choking under pressure A widely accepted explanation for choking under pressure in cognitive tasks is the distraction hypothesis (Wine, 1971). In accordance to distraction theories, it is proposed in high-pressure situations, the individuals attention needed to perform the task at hand is coopted by task irrelevant thoughts and worries such as worries about the situation and its consequences that leads to choking which harm their performances. (Beilock Carr, 2001; Lewis Linder, 1997; Wine, 1971). Essentially, pressure creates a dual-task environment in which situation-related concerns compete with the attention required to accomplish the task at hand. Distraction-based accounts of skill failure propose that performance pressure affects concentration from the main task that one is trying to perform to irrelevant cues. Therefore, there are insufficient working memory resources to successfully support both primary task performance and to deal with worries about the pressure situation and its consequences un der pressure which results in skill failure. Although there is evidence that pressure prompts failure by sidetracking attention away from skill performance, a contradicting class of theories has been put forth as an alternate explanation for skill failure. Baumeister (1984) proposed a self-focus theory called explicit-monitoring theory which claims the opposite that pressure could in ¬Ã¢â‚¬Å¡uence the performance of skilled individuals by causing them to engage explicit processes that interfere with carrying out the procedure such as increase in their self- consciousness and anxiety about performing well (Gray, 2004; Masters, 1992) which in turn leads performers to emphasize their attention on skill execution to ensure optimal result (Beilock Carr, 2001). This focus on the oneself is thought to prompt individuals to turn their focus inward on the precise processes of performance in an effort to apply more explicit monitoring and control than would be applied in a non-pressure situation. Rationale Distraction and explicit monitoring theories of choking under pressure pose very different mechanisms of skill failure. While distraction theories suggest that pressure influence performance by shifting attention and working memory resources away from it, explicit monitoring theories suggest that pressure shifts too much attention toward skill processes and procedures. However it is unclear as to whether distraction or explicit monitoring will impact performance, even though both mechanisms have tendencies to occur in certain contexts. We believe that pressure can do both in aspects of the performance environment itself. Distracting thoughts, explicit monitoring, or even both will be lead to depending on the specific elements of stress suffered in high-pressure situations as it may essentially involve multiple components; therefore, exerting multiple effects. The questions as to whether performance fail or succeed, and how this failure will occur, rest on aspects of the pressure situation and the required attention for the task being performed. Aim The aim of the experiment is to study the effect of different levels of pressure inflicted by an audience on peoples performance (word count and accuracy) in a typing task. Experimental outline This study was conducted on a total of 102 undergraduate psychology students, of which 54 were females and 48 were males. The participants ranged from 17 to 55 years of age (Mean=20.51 years; SD=6.28). The participants performed a typing task under 3 di ¬Ã¢â€š ¬erent environments which is no pressure, low pressure and high pressure in random order. The no pressure condition involves participants typing while the projector screen was turned off, so no one else in the room could see what they were typing. In the low pressure condition, the screen was turned on, so the rest of the class could see what was being typed. In the high pressure condition, the class crowded around the participant as they typed. In each condition, they are allocated a script of text which they need to replicate as much and as accurately as possible in the time allocated (45 seconds). Quality of performance is analyzed by counting the number of words typed and errors made. Hypothesis We hypothesize that pressure have a negative impact on performance. In no pressure condition, we predict that the participants would achieve the highest word count with lowest number of errors, whereas in high pressure condition, we predict that the participants would achieve the lowest word count with highest number of errors. Discussion The results showed that the number of words typed was significantly affected by pressured condition. Participants performance speed was fastest in the low pressure condition compared to the high-pressure condition. The results showed that accuracy was significantly affected by pressure condition. As for the participants accuracy, it was greater in the no-pressure condition compared to the low-pressure and the high-pressure condition. As such, the results of this study support the hypothesis proposed. These findings are consistent with the study conducted by Gray (2004) who examined how expert baseball players batted in a baseball simulator in both low-pressure and high-pressure conditions. Gray (2004) found an increase in batting errors and movement variability under high pressure, relative to low-pressure situation; suggesting that pressure negatively affects performance. As with the baseball players, we believe that our participants also experienced distracting thoughts and/or explicit monitoring under pressure which interrupted their performance. As a result, the participants experience a decrease in typing speed; hence, produced less word count and made more errors while typing. Strengths of the experiment This experiment assessed both male and female which rules out any possible gender difference. With the wide age range of 17 to 55 years of age, it also rules out age difference. Also, by manipulating the pressure environment, individuals will focus on the process of performance versus the outcome of performance, allowing us to study different aspects affecting ones performance in pressure-filled situations. Improvement to the experiment A larger sample size would have enabled us to achieve more accurate results. Significance This study enables us to better understand performance failure, and ways to prevent it; across a variety of skill types and situations, from a student taking a final exam paper to a professional athlete playing on the field. Such developed knowledge aids the improvement of training regiments and performance strategies designed to lighten these choking performances as such reducing the possibility of failure. Understanding the reason choking occurs is important for developing training methods to deal with it. Understanding skill failure and success under pressure may give a clear view on the similarities and differences in the cognitive control structures underlying a diverse set of skills. Furthermore, by uncovering the mechanisms thats leading pressure-induced failure, we can also further our understanding of how emotional and motivational factors combine with memory and attention processes to impact skill learning and performance. An understanding of how the performance environment modifies cognitive processes not only advances our understanding of the choking under pressure phenomenon explicitly but also provides an perception into related situations in which performance unintentionally falters, ranging from test anxiety to the threat of conforming to a negative stereotype. Finally, these  ¬Ã‚ ndings suggest an important avenue for future research working toward an all-embracing th eory of when performance will fail versus succeed under stressful situations.

Effect of Stress on Decision Making Essay -- miscellaneous

Effect of Stress on Decision Making Stress must be present to ensure our very being. One may wonder about the validity of this statement, but it is quite true. Stress plays a vital role in the way we make decisions (Massa et al, 2002, pg 1). â€Å"Problem solving and decision making in demanding real-world situations can be susceptible to acute stress effects which manifest in a variety of ways depending on the type of decision. The negative effects of an overload of acute stress include attentional tunneling, working memory loss, and restrictions in long term memory retrieval, with simple strategies being favoured over more complicated ones. The underlying assumption is that stress can lead to errors, poor performance and bad decisions. However, acute stress does not necessarily always have a detrimental effect on decision making, rather stress may affect the way information is processed. Some of those changes in strategy in response to stress are in fact adaptive. They reduce and select the information being attended to and processed, in response to high time pressure and reduced cognitive capacity† (Flin, 2004, pg 42). Flin has said so much about stress and decision making in this little space. To have a better understanding, we are going to elaborate in this essay and analyze the evidence that there is an effect of stress upon thinking and decision making ability. Stress can be defined in many different ways, but in relation to decision making, stress may be best defined from a scientific view describing the thought process of the brain. When the sensory organs perceive information, they send it to the thalamus of the brain, which deals with sensory perceptions. The information is then transmitted to the cerebral cortex where the process of conscious thinking and decision making takes place. In starting the process of conscious thinking, the cerebral cortex processes large amounts of information and judges what information can be dealt with automatically without our conscious awareness and what information must be consciously assessed. At this point emotions, feelings, character traits, and behavior are not part of the decision making process. Thus, the limbic system, which is directly responsible for these emotions and feelings, is activated by the cerebral cortex. Following the technicality of the stimulus, the stress response begins. The stres... ...uth. Flin, R. (1997). Sitting in the Hot Seat. Leaders and teams for Critical Incident Management. Klein, G. (1998).Sources of Power How People Make Decisions. Cambridge: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Massa, P., Watkins, C., Partridge, B (2002). Decision Making Under Stress. Available from: http://web.umr.edu/~bpart/eman313/DMUS.htm [accessed 16/05/05] Walker, K., Nayda, I.T., Turner, J. (2003b) Make-Up Your Mind -- Improving Your Decision-Making Skills. Available from: http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/ [accessed 16/05/04] â€Å"Thinking and Decision Making Under Stress†. Avalaible from: http://library.thinkquest.org/C0123421/thinking.htm [accessed 18/05/04] Shambach, A. (1996) Strategic Leadership Workshop: "Strategic Decision-making in the Information Age," U.S Army War College, Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania Thompson, Leigh, L. (2001). The Mind and Heart of the Negotiator, Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall. Walker, K., Torres, N.I and Turner, J. (2003a): Make-Up Your Mind: Improving Your Decision-Making Skills: Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences, University of Florida, Gainesville. Available from: http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/HE691 [accessed 18/05/04]

The Role of the Visual in Todays Society Essay -- Architecture Buildi

The Role of the Visual in Today's Society The role of the visual in today’s society is quite apparent. Beautiful, flashy images are everywhere in the media, and all of them serve the same purpose. The purpose of all of these images is to get you, the consumer to buy the product that is being sold, or at least buy into the idea that a particular product represents. The role of the visual in modern architecture is very much the same. The purpose of the visual in modern architecture is to publicize or privatize a building through any media necessary to create the desired representation, and thereby sell the idea. In the case of Le Corbusier, the goal was to create a very visual and public architecture. He recognized that not everybody would be able to go and personally see his buildings, thus he decided to bring his buildings to them. Obviously Corbusier believed very strongly in the representational value of his buildings, â€Å"I prefer drawing to talking. Drawing is faster, and leaves less room for lies.† In this quotation Corbusier describes just how important the role of the visual is to him. Experience is not necessary, and neither is discussion, just visualization. In the case of Villa Savoye (Poissy, France 1928-1929) Corbusier created a building based upon his principles of architecture, and the idea of the house as a machine for living. These programmatic elements yielded a simple building that followed his five points of architecture (peloti, ribbon windows, a roof garden, free faà §ade, and free plan). The way in which he composes these elements and ultimately how he represents the building are what make this a truly interesting piece of architecture, instead of a place for storing hay (as the building was once used). The physical appearance of the building (what it would look like if we were to visit) was an attempt by Corbusier to create a truly mechanical building, â€Å"A house is a machine for living in†. The building is built in the middle of a completely flat field, upon which this foreign object is placed, described as â€Å"†¦looking as if a spaceship had landed†¦Ã¢â‚¬  The building itself contains many of the same elements that one would find in an ocean liner. Elements such as a roof deck, railings and the curvaceous walls of the roof deck which look like the smokestacks of a ship. While these elements help to create Corbusier’s desired image the wa... ...sen site were an attempt to privatize architecture. All of the photographs of the building that were taken are of the interior, and the comfortable and private spaces therein. Often the images contain furs, which were intended by Eileen Gray to personalize the experience of looking at a photograph. It was also supposed to, in effect bring the people viewing the photograph into her home. This would give them a chance to experience the building for themselves. This is shown by the very few pictures that are taken of the building as a whole, it isn’t about watching E-1027 is about experiencing. This is in direct contrast to Corbusier’s more voyeuristic beliefs about the visual. Although the visual can be used to many different ends in modern architecture, it is used mostly to sell an idea. In the case of these two architects the ideas were very similar and yet opposite. Corbusier chose to publicize his buildings in order to gain a wide audience, which he felt was important, while Eileen Gray on the other hand chose to publicize the privacy of her building. Both interpretations of the role of the visual in modern architecture are an attempt to sell a particular idea to the public.

Child Protective Services Essay

Ice users in the state of Hawaii, estimated to have reached 30,000 in 2003, were spending as much as $1. 8 billion every year to maintain their addiction in what has been referred to by U. S Attorney Ed Kubo as the â€Å"highest usage of ice in the country. † (Sinq, 2003) Ice refers to methamphetamine, a strong, extremely addictive stimulant which could be introduced to the body by smoking, sniffing, oral ingestion, or injection and affects the nervous system. (Drug-Rehabs. org, n. d. ) The substance was believed to have been discovered in Japan sometime in 1919 and was actually used as a nasal decongestant in 1932. It was manufactured legally as non-medical tablets in the United States, taking the form of â€Å"dextroamphetamine (Dexedrine) and methamphetamine (Methedrine). † It rapidly became a favorite among athletes, university students, and even long distance truck drivers – people who need to stay alert for long periods of time. An injectable form was developed during the 1960s but was subjected to severe restriction under the Controlled Substance Act of 1970. (Drug-Rehabs. org. n. d. ) Today, Prosecutor Peter Carlisle of Honolulu said that adult people in Hawaii have been turning to ice instead of alcohol – in fact the highest number of adult ice-users (by state) in the entire country is found in the state of Hawaii. In Honolulu, it was estimated that about 38% of all those arrested for various offenses have been found positive for methamphetamine. Moreover, while the average rate of sentenced methamphetamine traffickers for the entire country in 2001 was placed at 14%, the rate for Hawaii had been 51%. (A Message from Honolulu Prosecutor Peter Carlisle, 2007) This only means one thing: ice trafficking in Hawaii has grown to be a very flourishing industry, which, to some people, indicates that ice abuse has already reached epidemic proportions in the state. As a matter of fact, recorded deaths attributed to methamphetamine use have also been steadily on the rise since 2000 when 34 persons were believed to have died from using the substance. In 2001, the number rose to 54 then climbed to 62 in 2002 before decreasing slightly to 56 deaths during the year 2003. In 2004, ice-related deaths rose again to 68 and as of the middle of May 2005, there were already 38 ice-related deaths in the state of Hawaii. According to Dr. Kanthi De Alwis, Chief Medical Examiner of Honolulu, majority of deaths from ice were due to the substance’s effect on the human brain and heart. He said that ice weakens and enlarges the heart, and blocks the coronary arteries. In some of the cases, Alwis said, blood enters the brain, killing the ice user almost instantly. (Drug-Rehabs. org, 2005) User death did not prove to be the only adverse effect of the ice epidemic on Hawaiian society. A much more damaging consequence had been its effect on children. In fact it was observed that although abuse of alcohol and illegal drugs also resulted to fractured families, ice addiction had proven to be more powerful and destructive, consuming â€Å"parents’ lives so quickly that experts placed it in a class of its own. † (Dayton, 2003b) As of 2003, almost 85% of the 7,000 children who were under foster care were children of ice users. Most of these children were traumatized. They also showed signs of being â€Å"angry† and were often destructive in their ways, aside from the fact that most of them lagged in their school work. Many of them have expressed their belief that their parents abandoned them either because something was very wrong with them, or their parents simply stopped loving them. If left unattended, experts feared that these children might end up as substance abusers themselves. At the very least, they are expected to suffer from the long-term effects of living with constant violence and chaos in the family. This is what some health professionals are trying to prevent, according to Jack Maynor who works as a child counselor in a spouse-abuse shelter. (Dayton, 2003a) In many cases, children were separated from their parents because of the parents’ addiction to ice. Families where either or both parents are ice addicts are characterized by violence, child abandonment, or both. Peggy Hilton of the East Hawai’i Child Welfare Services said that there are people who become totally addicted to methamphetamine in only a matter of a couple of weeks. She explained that ice is characterized by â€Å"extreme levels of domestic violence [and that] after a binge, ice users ‘crash’ and can sleep for days, leaving the children in the house to fend for themselves. † According to officials of the Child Protective Services, they are separating up to forty children from their parents every month due to ice addiction in the Big Island alone. (Dayton, 2003b) The effect of parents’ addiction to ice among Hawaiian children has been very extensive. Professionals working with children of methamphetamine abusers often talk about the depressing experiences of these children. James Jolliff, a clinical psychologist from Waimea, recalled working with a girl who found her ice addict father hanging from a tree in their backyard in an attempt to kill himself. He said that while her father was rescued from that suicide attempt, the girl was traumatized and would remain to be so for a long time to come. (Dayton, 2003a)