Tuesday, December 31, 2019

General Internet Skills - 1016 Words

[pic] General Internet Skills Using the Internet for Academic Purposes As a student I need to have general internet skills to survive at the University of Phoenix. These skills include†¦ âÅ"“ Understanding what the purpose of the browser is. âÅ"“ Understands the general structure of a website address. âÅ"“ Understands the key features of a web page. âÅ"“ Understands browser features such as; address bar, home buttons, history, etc. âÅ"“ Knows how to use key words in a simple search. âÅ"“ Understands how to navigate and use the University of Phoenix Student Portal. âÅ"“ Understands how to choose a information from a credible website. âÅ"“ Knows how to cite any electronic references from information†¦show more content†¦My main goal is to complete school and earn an Associate in Elementary Education. [pic] Managing Time Wisely I have had a tough time adjusting to the online school environment. I am still learning how to manage my time wisely. I always try to evaluate my schedule and how I spend my time. I work a third shift job, so I spend most of my time sleeping throughout the day. I have been told that I need to have at least 24 hours a week to study. Although it is hard for me to spend 24 hours because of my job, I do try to do at least 15 hours. I will start to use my time wisely on my days off. I will try to keep my schedule clear so that I can concentrate on my school assignments. I will also prioritize and try to get organized. I will be sure to not try to complete every assignment all at once. I will be sure to work on assignments when I am not tired. I will also be sure that I am in a quiet and comfortable environment. I will be sure to use all of these tips in my future classes. [pic] Fostering reading comprehension and retention In order to read effectively, I must follow the SQ3R guide. This guide provides the reading and learning strategy that helps me think critically. I will focus on key points in the readings. In order for me to follow along with my readings, I will be sure to highlight important notes. I will makeShow MoreRelatedThe Internet Has Influenced Our Lives And Relationships1164 Words   |  5 PagesGeneral Introductory statement Thesis Statement Body Economic Merits Learning to make prudent economic decisions More efficient than older shoppers Social Demerits Leads to bullying Creates immature in relationships Commentary Significance of human feeling Potential social issues Knowing how to shop Real commercial environment Conclusion Thesis Restatement Personal opinion Reference Page The Internet as an obstacle: Economic and Social Negatives for the Next Generation Introduction The internet hasRead MoreEmail, Internet And Digital Literacy Among The Indigenous People1325 Words   |  6 Pagesan issues of email, internet and digital literacy among the Indigenous people. The focus is particularly on email access, security and accessibility. It is also explain improvement of the internet and email access for aboriginal individuals. Keywords: Digital divide, indigenous people, internet skills, email access, Indigenous employment, Security Introduction: The developing technology of information on the internet and individuals expanding reliance on data, internet skills ought to be consideredRead MoreThe Assessment Of A Community s Decision For Real Initiative958 Words   |  4 PagesAccording to Monmonier (1996), those who do have Internet and GIS accessibility face the potential to be placed in a vulnerable position. He believes that the public who is â€Å"armed with a GIS but lacking the savvy to use the system appropriately becomes vulnerable to sarcastic attacks from site advocates†. Meaning, that a community’s opinion may not be taken seriously or may be misrepresented in the eyes of policymakers because the people in that community may not be using the GIS software correctlyRead More How Much is Too Much? Essay1293 Words   |  6 Pagesthe grade of technology and its accessibility for the general public rise, its cost decreases, making such options as home computers and computers in the classroom a more viab le option for many families and schools, respectively. While there are obvious benefits of technology as a learning tool for our children, there are many downfalls as well. This paper hopes to better explain some of the positives, such as fast word processing, Internet information searches and computer reference databasesRead MoreEmail Access For Electronic Correspondence1246 Words   |  5 Pagescentury. Without any difficulty of utilization in PCs, and the correspondence force of the Internet, it just takes unimportant seconds to sort up and send an email. That is why, Email has a huge impact in correspondence, both professionally and socially. However, there are several studies used to investigate that especially in the Indigenous Australians have more difficulty to access to computer, internet and email. Email Address In this digital era, numerous individuals appreciate sending a gettingRead MoreMrm Case Study Analysis1691 Words   |  7 Pagessurveys methods used. The sample size is very large and intends to have a good representation of the voting public. Random digit dialing and lists of addresses are used as the sampling strategy. The findings of this research intends to answer of internet voting is effective and a good alternative voting method in the sense that it reduces the costs of public elections but at the same time be reliable and credible. The total cost of implementing this proposal is averaging to about AU$ 121785Read MorePrinciples of Management Applied Research1041 Words   |  5 PagesPrinciples of management APPLIED RESEARCH USbank Will Cheeseman Professor Ana  Preston Park University Internet Campus A course paper presented to the School for Arts and Sciences and Distance Learning in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Computer Information Systems Principles of Management Park University July, 2011 TABLE OF CONTENTS Read MoreCasino General Manager Salary Is $ 64052756 Words   |  4 Pages Casino General Manager Casino General Manager salary is $64,052 Resources-Book,Internet,and book on the internet Casino general managers supervise and coordinate the overall operations at a casino.They strive to make sure the casino runs efficiently, earns a profit, and operates within parameters established by gaming laws. Marketing, personnel, customer satisfaction, and security are some of the areas overseen by casino general managers. CasinoRead MoreHum Week Four Assignment987 Words   |  4 PagesJob Description and Recruiting Strategies Worksheet Conduct an interview with someone who has a career or job position that is different from your own. Identify the duties associated with his or her position, as well as any skills and abilities necessary for the position. Use the information gathered in the interview, as well as the Week 3 readings, to complete the following worksheet. Answer each question in paragraph format. JOB ANALYSIS 1. What are the duties and job responsibilitiesRead MoreThe Negative Effects Of The Internet911 Words   |  4 PagesThe world wide web otherwise called the internet came about in the 1960s and was primary used for researchers and academia. But since the 1990s, the internet has had that revolutionary effect on the culture and commerce in our society. This includes communication by email, instant messaging, internet phone calls. In addition, there is also the world wide web with discussion forums, social networking sites, and online shopping sites which several amount of people, despite their generation have utilized

Monday, December 23, 2019

Exploring Themes in Sonnets - 1751 Words

The six poems that I shall be comparing are: Sonnet 116, My last duchess, La Belle Dame Sans Merci, The highwayman, The laboratory and The ballad of Tam Lin. There is a common theme that runs through all of these poems of relationships and the love in them whether it be the love lost between two lovers such as in the Laboratory or a fantasy love such as in The ballad of Tam Lin. In La Belle Dame Sans Merci the speaker of the poem comes across a knight all alone and who is apparently dying in a field. He proceeds to ask the poor knight about the awful fate that has befallen him. The knight’s reply takes up the rest of the poem; he says that one day he met a beautiful faery in the fields. He spent the whole day with her making her flower†¦show more content†¦My Last Duchess is a dramatic monologue where in the Duke of Ferrara is negotiating with an emissary for the hand of the counts daughter. During the negotiations the duke takes the man upstairs to see his gallery which includes a portrait of his late wife which is kept behind a curtain only he can draw. The duke goes on to explain to the man that it was painted by Frà   Pandolf and the circumstances in which it was painted. He believed that his wife was having an affair with the painter as she used to smile and blush when around him and even showed him her wrist. Her actions put the duke i nto a demented rage which forced him to give command that â€Å"all smiles stopped together† meaning that he probably had his first wife killed. After telling this story to the family of his bride to be they leave with the duke pointing out some other pieces on the way. The structure of this poem is one long stanza consisting of 56 lines; the rhyming structure is quite basic and made up of rhyming couplets (A-A-B-B). The rhythm is an iambic pentameter meaning that it is consisted of five iambs. There are some images in My Last Duchess that are quite shocking such as â€Å"all smiles stopped together† where you know that he has killed her and can almost see the smile falling from her face. The tone is quite arrogant and the duke says his lines with self-importance and a pretentiousness that is characteristic of someone with money and power â€Å"as if she ranked my gift of aShow MoreRelated Exploring the Theme of Love in Sonnets 57 and 58 Essay1317 Words   |  6 Pages Shakespeare’s sonnets are numbered in a sequential order and adjacent sonnets often have similar content. Throughout Shakespeare’s sonnets, he covers many subjects, such as interest in the life of a young man, his love for a young man, and his love for a dark haired woman. In sonnets 57 and 58, Shakespeare discusses how love is like slavery in its different manifestations. The object of the narrator’s love has a dominating power over the narrator, which controls him and guides his actions. ShakespeareRead MoreTheme Of Love In Wuthering Heights922 Words   |  4 PagesLove can take many forms. Sonnet 18, undoubtedly one of Shakespeare’s most famous works and believed to be one of the most famous love poems of all time, illustrates the timelessness and true beauty of love in a natural, pure way. In contrast, Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights takes a far darker, more intense yet somewhat sinister twist when exploring the themes of love, passion and cru elty. One of the greatest love stories in English literature, the love-hate passionate relationship between CathyRead MoreWilliam Shakespeare s Poetry Of Love1612 Words   |  7 Pagesrelationships. By comparing two poems from William Shakespeare it is shown how he has been able to articulate the poetic theme of love. This seminar will analyze and explore two of Shakespeare’s poems focusing on the particular theme of love. Shakespeare deals with deep and enduring love, as he applies his past experiences to his poems. Shakespeare’s poems Sonnet 116 and Sonnet 130 are based around the romantic pursuits of his life, and they have similar context but deliver different meanings of whatRead MoreRationalizing Rejection in Sonnet 421556 Words   |  7 PagesSonnet 42: Rationalizing Rejection Shakespeare’s Sonnet 42 is about a man, the speaker, who is contemplating the loss of his lover to his friend. The speaker is exploring the motive for his lover’s choice of betrayal; more notably he is attempting to explain why this betrayal has occurred with a series of different rationalizations. The speaker appears to believe that he will not be as pained by his loss if he were to rationalize why his lover betrayed him. Shakespeare notoriously wrote threeRead More Immortality Through Verse in Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18 and Spenser’s Sonnet 751681 Words   |  7 PagesImmortality Through Verse in Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18 and Spenser’s Sonnet 75  Ã‚     Ã‚  Ã‚   Desiring fame, celebrity, and importance, people for centuries have yearned for the ultimately unattainable goal of immortality. Poets, too, have expressed desires in verse that their lovers remain as they are for eternity, in efforts of praise. Though Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18 and Spenser’s Sonnet 75 from Amoretti both offer lovers this immortality through verse, only Spenser pairs this immortality with respectRead MoreJohn Keats s On First Looking Into Chapman s Homer942 Words   |  4 Pagesexcellent perspective on nature. As well as the relationship between man and nature. He allows readers to truly visualize nature in their mind when they read his work. John Keats’s poem, On first looking into Chapman s Homer was written in 1816. The sonnet tells the reader about how Keats compares his experiences to reading about Homer’s novel dealing with Odysseus’s experience of adventures around the world. Keats gives the reader a sense of how going to so many places does not mean that you have trulyRead MoreEssay on Comparison Between the Great Gatsby and Ebb Sonnets1078 Words   |  5 Pagestexts ‘The Great Gatsby’ by F.Scott Fitzgerald and ‘Sonnets from the Portuguese’ by Elizabeth Barrett Browning explore the ideas of aspirations and identity developing a deeper understanding of the texts. Both texts share these ideas through the characters and the values of idealism and hope, and personal voice and identity. Although the two texts are separated in time and context, they both reflect the world of the text and composer. ‘Sonnets from the Portuguese’ was written during the 19th CenturyRead MoreShakespeare s Sonnet 12 ( 1609 ) And George Herbert s Poem Virtue ( 1633 )894 Words   |  4 PagesThis essay will address the theme of death in Shakespeare’s Sonnet 12 (1609) and George Herbert’s poem Virtue (1633). Both Shakespeare and Herbert explore notions of death in their poems, in terms of the tension between the psychical and the spiritual in a religious context. However, where they differ is that Shakespeare places emphasis on the importance of the corporeal, and of what is left behind on earth after death. In contrast, Herbert focuses on the impermanence of the physical, instead advocatingRead MoreHow Can You Interpret The Hidden Messages And Morals Taught By John Keats1055 Words   |  5 Pagesaudience think about poetry. The essays will also compare and contrast the subject matter, themes, rhyme, forms and the poetic devices and features. These poems to be analysed are On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer (‘Chapman’s Homer’) and La Belle Dame Sans Merci (‘La Belle’) both written by John Keats. Firstly, it is worthwhile considering the form of each poem. ‘Chapman’s Homer’ is Petrarchan sonnet, which is one octave and turn of thought at the Sestet. The octave quoting â€Å"Yet did I neverRead MoreShakespeare s Sonnet 116, La Belle Dame Sans Merci, My Last Duchess And Three Others?2245 Words   |  9 PagesHow is love presented/explored in the poems Sonnet 116, La Belle Dame Sans Merci, My Last Duchess and three others? (Intro) Love is a constant theme explored in English Literature and can be presented through a variety of connotations, such as romantic, sexual and possessive. The poems Sonnet 116, La Belle Dame Sans Merci and My Last Duchess all portray these notions. Sonnet 116 presents a real, romantic and everlasting love, as the poem explores the meaning of love in its most ideal form. This is

Sunday, December 15, 2019

The Tides a Poetry Analysis Free Essays

During the Romantic Period of literature, William Cullen Bryant created the brilliant poem, â€Å"The Tides. † This specific poem is the story of watching the tides change. Most of Bryant’s works are nature-oriented and take advantage of multiple literary terms. We will write a custom essay sample on The Tides: a Poetry Analysis or any similar topic only for you Order Now â€Å"The Tides† has a significant meaning, several romantic elements, and uses many literary devices. The general interpretation of â€Å"The Tides† is about what occurs when the tides change. Bryant uses great description in characterizing the violent seas at high tide. Norbert Krapf analyzed this poem and described the water becoming mysterious, not still and pond-like. Krapf 6) The poet gives the water violent characteristics. â€Å"His imagination transforms the scene into an image of limitation and imprisonment† (Krapf 7). The poem begins as a calm, serene ocean. Increasingly throughout the story, waters become more violent marking as the change of the tides from low to high. The meaning of â€Å"The Tides† can also be very deep. As the change to high tide strikes, the sea relieves its stress and releases. Humans go through the exact same thing by relieving stress. Norbert Krapf also writes that â€Å"The Tides† is powerful and the sea yearns for release. (Krapf 7) William Cullen Bryant wrote â€Å"The Tides† during the Romantic Era. Bryant gave this poem many Romantic qualities. Describing the sea before and during high tide sees the attitude of â€Å"longing for the past† While the sea is becoming violent, there is a sense of the waters wanting to become as serene as they were during low tide. The â€Å"love for the natural landscape† is described throughout the entire duration of the poem. The narrator depicts a violent scene of the tides as they change into a beautiful scene of nature. Bryant depicts the beauty of the sea and his appreciation for the ocean. The â€Å"concern for individual freedom† is also a romantic attitude seen in â€Å"The Tides. † The ocean waters are described as imprisoned and wanting to relieve their stress. When the tides officially change, the sea becomes free and releases all of its stress. Many literary terms and devices are observed while reading â€Å"The Tides. † William Cullen Bryant writes this poem starting with iambic pentameter and changes to iambic tetrameter. This poem is also written in ten quatrains. The rhyme scheme ABAB is present in â€Å"The Tides. † Personification is seen many times in this poem such as in stanza eight. Bryant describes the ocean’s water as a prisoner yearning for release. Run-on lines are used throughout the poem. â€Å"And, with a sullen moan, abashed, they creep/ Back into his inner caves† (Lines 23-24) is an example of a run-on line. â€Å"The Tides convey through impressionistic imagery a desire to escape the pull of cosmic forces. † (Muller 254) Imagery is used heavily in this poem. William Cullen Bryant’s use of imagery creates a vivid picture of the tides changing. The tones of this poem are beauty, strength, violence, and serenity. The tides wish for peace and serenity, and therefore yearn for the low tide to come again. This is the theme of â€Å"The Tides. † William Cullen Bryant’s diction is seen by his very descriptive words, his rhyme scheme, and his love for nature’s beauty. The literary devices and themes, romantic elements, and general meaning of William Cullen Bryant’s poem â€Å"The Tides† characterize this time period’s writing style. Bryant creates a beautiful piece of literature that causes the reader to think about the different â€Å"thoughts† of a wave when the tides are changing. The love of nature is a romantic element that is depicted many times in this poem. This gives the poem a very Romantic feeling. The imagery Bryant uses does a brilliant job of giving the reader a depiction of the tides at its break. â€Å"The Tides† is a beautiful work by Bryant and a perfect example of a Romantic poem. Works Cited Krapf, Norbert. â€Å"William Cullen Bryant’s Roslyn Poems. † Under an Open Sky, Poets on William Cullen Bryant. New York: The Stone House Press, 1986. Muller, Gilbert H. William Cullen Bryant: Author of America. Albany: State University of New York, 2008. How to cite The Tides: a Poetry Analysis, Essay examples

Saturday, December 7, 2019

Theoretical Foundations of Accounting for Rozycki - myassignmenthelp

Question: Discuss about theTheoretical Foundations of Accounting for Dodd and Rozycki. Answer: Introduction The accounting researchers are placing emphasis on conducting researches on various contemporary accounting issues for developing a deep insight into them. The contemporary accounting issue refers to the current topics evolved in the accounting field that has caused large scale changes in the respective field. Thus, as such it is essential for the accounting professional to develop an adequate knowledge of these accounting concepts for their effective implementation and adoption. There are many accounting issues that are evolving in the present business environment that will have a significant impact on the accounting professionals such as increasing demand to skilled professionals, globalization, control of fraudulent accounting activities and many others (Walton, 2011). In this context, the present research report is developed for analyzing the contemporary accounting issue of usefulness of current accounting framework in meeting the needs of financial reports users. Background The International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) has established the conceptual accounting framework for defining the fundamental concepts that guides the development and preparation of the general purpose financial statements. The conceptual accounting framework seeks to meet the needs and expectations of external users such as investors and creditors through providing them high quality financial reports. Aims and Objectives of Research The main aim of the research study is to evaluate and examine the effectiveness of conceptual accounting framework in developing high-quality financial reports as per the interests of end-users. In this regard, these are the following objectives of the research study: To develop an insight into the various qualitative characteristics of conceptual accounting framework To examine its usefulness in meeting the objectives of general purpose financial reports Research Questions The main research question that the overall research study will aim to address is How conceptual accounting framework for financial reports in is effectives in satisfying the interests of users? Literature Review Wolk, Dodd and Rozycki (2012) stated that the conceptual accounting framework is developed on the basis of normative theory of accounting. The theory provides guidelines to the accountants regarding the ways of practicing accounting in managing the financial activities of an entity. The theory has stated that the major role of accounting theory is to provide suggestions to the accountants regarding the adequate accounting approaches to be adopted for resolving a particular problem. The theory has stated the qualitative characteristics that should be possessed by financial information for meeting the needs and expectations of the end-users. The qualitative characteristics are relevance, understandability, comparability and reliability. These characteristics have laid to the foundation of conceptual accounting framework that seeks to identify the objectives of financial reporting. As per the normative theory, the conceptual accounting framework provided fundamental and some enhanced qu alitative characteristics that financial information should possess. The characteristics provide guidance to the accounting experts in development of high-quality financial reports as argued by the normative theory of accounting. Thus, it can be said that conceptual accounting framework is mainly developed for meetings the needs of users of financial reports (Wolk, Dodd and Rozycki, 2012). As per the information gained from Conceptual Framework for Financial Reporting 2010 (2010), the framework as per the normative accounting theory provides the general purpose financial reporting objectives of disclosing all the necessary information required in decision-making process of end users. The primary users of financial reports are present and future investors, creditors and lenders that need to obtain the financial information of an entity for making decisions relating to purchasing or selling their equity and debt instruments. As such, the framework has provided that the main aim of developing financial reports is to protect the interests of its primary users so that they are able to take error-free decisions regarding their investment. Thus, the accounting professionals in developing financial reports should meet some qualifying characteristics to ensure the development of high quality financial statements. The conceptual accounting framework has stated two fundamental an d some enhanced qualitative characteristics that financial information disclosed by an entity should possess. Mir and Nekoueizadeh (2015) stated that the fundamental qualitative characteristics of financial information are relevance and faithful presentation. The relevance characteristics states that financial information disclosed should possess both a predictive and confirmatory value. The predictive value should be able to provide an estimate of the future growth of an entity while confirmatory one should disclose information relating to its present financial condition. The faithful presentation of financial information ensures that it should be complete, neutral and error-free. In addition to these characteristics, there are some enhancing qualitative characteristics to be possessed by financial information. These are comparability, verifiability, timeliness and understandability. The comparability of financial information means that it should be comparable with the results of previous years for assessing the increase in financial growth in the current year. The verifiability states that financial information should accurately depict the economic facts and figures related to it. Also, timeliness means that the information should be available to the decision-makers timely and should be simple and easy to interpret as per the understandability principle (Mir and Nekoueizadeh, 2015). As per the Hoffman (2016), these all are the characteristics that should be possessed by financial information disclosed by an entity to effectively meet the end-users requirements and are prescribed by normative theory of accounting. In addition to this, the conceptual accounting framework has also provided the definition, recognition and measurement of elements of financial statements such as assets, liabilities, equity, income and expenses. These financial elements depict the accounting transactions of an entity as per the IASB framework. The framework has regarded assets, liability and equity to state the financial position of an entity in its balance sheet. On the other hand, the financial elements reflecting the financial performance in the income statement of an entity are income and expenses. The asset refers to tangible and intangible resources of an entity while liabilities represents its financial obligations that it is expected to meet in short and long-term period of tim e. The equity proportion is the remaining resources of an entity while meeting all the liabilities. On the other hand, income represents the economic benefits achieved by an entity while expenses relates to the depletion of equity incurred during a reporting period. The financial statements are recognized in the balance sheet and income statement through meeting the definition provided in the conceptual accounting framework for each element. The criteria for recognition of these elements as per the framework are that they should be stated in the financial statement only when there is an expected economic benefit associated with these elements. Also, the value can be assessed accurately by an entity. Also, as per the framework the financial elements are measured during financial reporting through the use of different methods such as historical cost, current cist, net realizable value and present value (Hoffman, 2016). Hussey and Ong (2017) stated that the conceptual accounting framework as directed by IASB need to be followed by all the reporting entities across the world. The AASB (Australian Accounting Standards Board) has also emphasized all the business entities in the country for complying with the conceptual accounting framework as stated by IASB. This can be demonstrated form examining the financial reports of different business entities operating in Australia. For example, the annual reports of Wesfarmers Limited states that it effectively complies with the principles of conceptual accounting framework. The annual reports are prepared in accordance with the AASB and IFRS standards so that it meets the needs of end-users adequately. The financial statements provide relevant, complete, understandable and comparable information as per the conceptual accounting framework. The company has effectively disclosed the accounting policies adopted in developing financial statements in notes to statem ents section. The particular accounting methods adopted for identification, recognition and measurement of different financial elements are also discussed in detail in the financial reports of the company (Wesfarmers: Annual Report, 2016). According to Horngren et al. (2012), there are some debates relating to the usefulness of conceptual accounting framework in meeting the needs of end-users among the accounting professionals. There are some limitations to its use that have restricted its usefulness in developing high quality financial reports. The major difficulty in establishing the conceptual framework is that it is very complicated and therefore the accounting professionals are not able to effectively meet its various aspects. The development of financial reports as per the conceptual accounting framework is also time-consuming and therefore the accounting experts find it very difficult to effectively implement during the preparation of financial statements (Horngren et al., 2012). Kabalski (2009) stated that the framework is based largely on normative theory of accounting and thus it is difficult for the accounting professionals to bring forward new ideas through its use as it is based on rigid principles. The ac counting professionals also face problems in obtaining congruence between its nature of business activities and the accounting principles of conceptual framework at the time of developing financial reports. Also, it only aims to protect the interest of some users of financial reports and does not meet the expectations of other users such as consumers, government and social groups. Therefore, the IASB should aim to overcome all these limitations of conceptual accounting framework for promoting its larger use in developing quality financial reports as per the needs of users (Kabalski, 2009). Research Approach Research methodology is very significant for any research as it lays down the path to complete the research project in the successful manner. It is provides the smooth platform to carry out the proceeding of the research work. It is true that there is need of guiding map for organizing, arranging and conducting the research process to complete the study. After discussing the research topic in detail under literature review section, there is need to collect some data in order to support it so that research objectives can be completed. There are multiple sections of the research methodology like research approach, research design, data collection method etc (Fink 2005). The proper understanding of the research objectives will help to select the most appropriate research approach. There are two main research approaches, inductive and deductive research approach. Inductive research approach collects information related to the specific parts of the research topic after that analyzed to make the general observation (Fowler 2002). On the other hand, deductive approach is similar to top down approach where information collected as general and after that specific conclusion is made to approach at definite conclusion. In this research report information is needed to analyse how conceptual framework helps to improve the quality of the financial information to meet the expectations of the users of the annual report. So here it is important to analyse how the annual reports of various companies are being prepared to maintain quality of the financial information. Therefore inductive research approach is needed to research for the specific information and then c ollective decision will be taken on the basis of such information (Gillham 2000). Explorative research design has been used in this research process as it seems most suitable and profound for this study. The selected research design is useful in collecting the required information and also to investigate them in detail (Crowther Lancaster 2008). The techniques and tools required to collect the data and information is called as the research methods. The methods used to collect and interpret the data are known as the research methods (Karami 2007). The research methods are used to collect both forms of data i.e. qualitative and quantitative data. In this research only qualitative research data has been explored and research methods are applied in accordance with it. In this research study only secondary information is collected from publically available data sources (Kimmel 2007). As there is need to analyse the how conceptual framework is worth needed to present the qualitative information in the financial reports, therefore various information on International Accounting Standards website and various annual reports of companies in Australia are being examined to make proper opinion on the given research topic. So it can be said that information has been gathered through secondary sources using the online websites sources and some literature sources like books and journals. Data collected has been analyzed through conducting secondary analysis like literature review (Denzin Lincoln 2000). There are many ethical issues related to the research work such as reliability of the online sources used and copyright. So due consideration has been taken to avoid the ethical issues such as proper referencing has been done to give credit to the information sources authors or concerned entity (Johnson Duberley 2000). Results The overall research project has helped in developing an insight into the importance of conceptual accounting framework during the preparation of financial reports. The research report has indicated that conceptual accounting framework has identified and developed the objective of general purpose financial reports. The framework is mainly designed to meet the needs of primary users of financial reports that are its present and future investors and creditors. The framework is developed on the basis of normative theory of accounting that has identified and developed the qualitative characteristics of conceptual accounting framework. The framework has stated the accounting procedures in identifying and measuring the different financial elements of the financial reports. Thus, its use is helping the investors largely to easily understand and interpret the financial information without much analysis and as such largely beneficial for them. Discussion The research report has stated that conceptual accounting framework is necessary to be adopted for business entities around the world in developing high quality financial reports. This is done through providing the objective of general purpose financial reports that is to satisfy the needs of primary users of financial reports that are analysts and investors as discussed in the research report. The framework has provided the qualitative characteristics that financial information should possess for meeting the primary users expectations. The qualitative characteristics are based on the normative accounting theory that is mainly developed in order to provide suggestions to the accounting professionals for quality financial reporting (Pietra, McLeay and Ronen, 2013). The theory is based on morality grounds and aims to describe the economic future of a company based on the subjective assumptions. Thus, as such the conceptual accounting framework also aims to incorporate the use of ethica l principles in developing the financial reports so that users gain faithful and neutral financial information. The conceptual accounting framework qualitative characteristics thus seek to develop a code of conduct for the accounting professionals so that financial formation disclosed in its true sense without any manipulation (Sheridan, 2016). The conceptual accounting framework though is adopted by various accounting boards such as AASB but yet its effective adoption is impacted by various difficulties as stated in the research report. The major problem in this context is complex nature of conceptual accounting framework and therefore accounting professionals find it difficult to meet the varying aspects of the framework. The developing nations are still founding it difficult to adopt the conceptual accounting framework due to significant cost and time required for it implementation (Mintz, 2013). Conclusion It can be summarized from the discussion held in the research report that conceptual accounting framework is providing to be extremely beneficial for the primary users. This is because the financial information presented through its use is reliable, comparable, and understandable and is free from nay biasness and errors. However, the IASB should overcome the significant difficulties faced by different boards across the word in its effective implementation for providing benefits to all the primary users across the world. References Conceptual Framework for Financial Reporting 2010. 2010. [Online]. Available at: https://www.iasplus.com/en/standards/other/framework [Accessed on: 11 October, 2017]. Crowther, D. Lancaster, G. 2008. Research Methods: A Concise Introduction to Research in Management and Business Consultancy. 2nd ed. Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann. Denzin, N. Lincoln, Y. 2000. A Handbook of Qualitative Research. 2nd ed. London: Sage. Fink, A. 2005. How to Conduct Surveys: a Step by Step Guide. 3rd ed. London: Sage. Fowler, F.J. 2002. Survey Research Methods. 3rd ed. London: SAGE. Gillham, B. 2000. Developing a Questionnaire. London/New York: Continuum. Hoffman, C.W. 2016. Revising the Conceptual Framework of the International Standards: IASB Proposals Met with Support and Skepticism. World Journal of Business and Management 2 (1), pp. 1-32. Horngren, C. et al. 2012. Financial Accounting. Pearson Higher Education AU. Hussey, R. and Ong, A. 2017. Corporate Financial Reporting. Springer. Johnson, P., Duberley, J. 2000. Understanding Management Research: An Introduction to Epistemology. London: SAGE. Kabalski, P. 2009. Comments on the Objective of Financial Reporting in the Proposed New Conceptual Framework. Eurasian Journal of Business and Economics 2 (4), pp.95-111. Karami, A. 2007.Strategy Formulation in Entrepreneurial Firms. Ashgate Publishing Ltd. Kimmel, A. 2007. Ethical Issues in Behavioural Research: Basic and Applied Perspectives. Wiley-Blackwell. Mintz, S. 2013. Accounting for the Public Interest: Perspectives on Accountability, Professionalism and Role in Society. Springer Science Business Media. Mir, F. and Nekoueizadeh, S. 2015. Rules-based Accounting standards and Principles based Accounting standards. Technical Journal of Engineering and Applied Sciences. Pietra, R., McLeay, S and Ronen, J. 2013. Accounting and Regulation: New Insights on Governance, Markets and Institutions. Springer Science Business Media. Sheridan, T. 2016. Managerial Fraud: Executive Impression Management, Beyond Red Flags. Routledge. Walton, P. 2011. A Global History of Accounting, Financial Reporting and Public Policy: Asia and Oceania. Emerald Group Publishing. Wesfarmers: Annual Report. 2016. [Online]. Available at: https://www.wesfarmers.com.au/docs/default-source/reports/2016-annual-report.pdf?sfvrsn=4 [Accessed on: 11 October, 2017]. Wolk, H.I., Dodd, J.L. and Rozycki, J.J. 2012. Accounting Theory: Conceptual Issues in a Political and Economic Environment. SAGE.

Friday, November 29, 2019

The Guide To Getting It On! Essays - Sexual Acts,

The Guide To Getting It On! The Guide to Getting it On! A New and Mostly Wonderful Book About Sex By Paul Joannides The Guide to Getting it On! is unlike any book on human sexuality that I have ever read. Not to say that I read a lot of human sexuality books, but the ones I have looked over (including the text for this class) are often bland and stagnant. The Guide to Getting it On! has an approach to human sexuality that is fun, witty, and extremely sensitive all in one. This 370 page book contains subjects on sex that are designed to make the reader think outside of the box (no pun intended) about their own sexuality and the sexuality of others. It is a playful look into the modern relationships of today, and an aid to couples wanting to spice up their love life. Topics discussed in this manual vary from getting naked and intercourse to sex toys and being gay in the 90s. Practically any topic you can think of about human sexuality is covered in this book and makes for a heavy read. This book also has a section that reviews additional resources for the reader to investigate further. In the back o f this book is a glossary of sex, slang and cultural-related words and their definitions. This guide is not for the faint of heart or closed-minded. It uses several slang, and dirty words throughout the book to describe concepts of human sexuality. It even has a chapter addressing the use of dirty words and why this book has chosen to do so. While I believe that the use of dirty and slang terms generally degrades from the value of a book, The Guide to Getting it On! accomplishes the task tastefully and in good humor. Most of the titles of the chapters are somewhat provocative in nature, and serve to spark interest. Prudent readers will be taken aback at first glance over the book to find chapters such as Chapter 21: Oscillator, Generator, Vibrator, Dildo and Chapter 11: The Zen of Finger Fucking. But upon further inspection they will find a very informative and thought provoking view of an aspect of sexuality that they may had little or no prior experience with. Although this book does not have any photographs, it does have quite a few explicit drawings. Some of these drawings serve to visually show the reader some of the techniques that are covered in the text. Others are to show whole concepts in themselves. One such drawing is The Goofy Dick Game Real Penises of Real Guys This shows 5 flaccid penises on one page and five erect ones on the next. The object is to match the two up. The whole point of this exercise is to show how the size of the soft penis does not predict the size of the erect counterpart. This was new to me because I havent really had any experience with *censored*s other than my own. It was cool to find out that larger soft penises often dont get as big erections and smaller soft penises usually stretch more during an erection. This book is actually divided into two separate sections. The first ten chapters focus on general knowledge about sex and different aspects of sex. Topics include a brief history of sex, dirty words, the importance of getting naked, on the penis, whats inside a girl?, mens and womens experience of sex, orgasms and sex fluids. The dirty word chapter is about the sexual nature of dirty words. These chapters are very informative, and in a way like our textbook. They dispense lots of facts about the various biological, psychological, and social aspects of each topic. The remainder of the book is a sex manual, or a how-to. It gives lots of techniques, hints and tips on anything that is sexual in nature. Masturbation, oral sex, genital massage, intercourse, anal sex, sex toys are a few of the many more traditional topics covered. Although The Guide to Getting it On! is a very complete and well thought out manual, there are a few weaknesses in the book that some readers will not like. Depending on the readers belief

Monday, November 25, 2019

Verbing Nouns

Verbing Nouns â€Å"Verbing† Nouns â€Å"Verbing† Nouns By Guest Author This is a guest post by Jeannine Sohayda. If you want to write for Daily Writing Tips check the guidelines here. I was disappointed yesterday when, while cruising Facebook, I noticed a national pharmacy company’s request for me to â€Å"fan† them. I simply cannot agree to become a fan of a company that thinks turning nouns into verbs is hip and thereby will increase its customer base. If they had instead asked me to â€Å"become a fan†, I may have indeed considered it, because I do shop there often. I’m no stranger to nouns becoming verbs; we’ve all â€Å"Googled† for information. I must admit, it was refreshing to see that Twitter asks its users simply to â€Å"follow† other users on its site. I suppose â€Å"Twitter me† would make no sense. However, the word â€Å"fan† is already both a noun and a verb, and to see it used in this way was particularly jolting. By the way, even the word â€Å"verb† is a noun. I often wonder what it must be like for people who are just learning English. While they are trying to find words and phrases to get them through their days in English, we are simultaneously butchering and deconstructing our own language, making it difficult even for native speakers to understand each other. If we were to think about it in reverse, about the difficulties of learning Chinese, for example, as Americans we would be infuriated at the idea of their randomly adding new words as we page in vain through our phrase book. If we want people to speak, write and, in general, communicate understandably in English, I’d like to suggest that we set a good example and use the language as it was intended: as a means to illuminate rather than obfuscate. Want to improve your English in five minutes a day? Get a subscription and start receiving our writing tips and exercises daily! Keep learning! Browse the Misused Words category, check our popular posts, or choose a related post below:Regarding Re:Abstract Nouns from Adjectives5 Examples of Insufficient Hyphenation Verbing Nouns Verbing Nouns Verbing Nouns By Maeve Maddox Two readers wonder about the practice of using nouns as if they were verbs. Nanerl wonders if journaled is acceptable. Marilyn writes: My colleagues, at a reputable academic institution, all use the word action as a verb, such as: we must action these items and before these items can be actioned. This drives me crazy because Im sure action does not have a verb connotation, but the word is used so frequently with this connotation that I am no longer sure. Id guess that we all have our lists of verbed nouns we hate to hear or read. We may not, however, all agree as to which are abominations and which are not. Some examples from the web: 1. Clause said all three girls were initially conscious at the scene. Swanson and Zeien were flighted to the Milwaukee Area Medical Complex. (An arrow may be flighted with feathers, but injured people in a helicopter are being flown to a hospital.) 2. How many People Were Impacted? and How Severely? (Whats wrong with affected?) 3. Federalist Papers Authored by Alexander Hamilton (Hamilton was the author. He wrote the document.) The capacity of English for turning nouns into verbs is both its glory and its bane. This line from Richard II shows how Shakespeare managed to verb even such a noun as uncle: Henry IV: My gracious uncle- Edmund of Langley: Tut, tut! †¨Grace me no grace, nor uncle me no uncle:†¨I am no traitors uncle; As long ago as 1870 Henry Alford noted that the tendency to use nouns as verbs is so much a part of the nature of English speakers that its futile to rail against it: I do not see that we can object to this tendency in general, seeing that it has grown with the growth of our language, and under due regulation is one of the most obvious means of enriching it. Verbs thus formed will carry themselves into use, in spite of the protests of the purists. The Queens English. In Alfords day people were objecting to the use of experience as a verb. As for journaled and actioned, I think the first is possibly OK while the second is abominable. Sometimes a verbed noun fills a void, but too often it is the lazy expedient of a thoughtless writer. The best course of action I can suggest is to take the trouble to consider appropriate verbs that already exist before taking a noun that has not previously been used as anything but a noun and turning it into a verb. In deciding whether or not to use one of these fairly recent coinages, consider your own sense of aesthetics. If you feel that the word is ugly, dont encourage the spread of it by using it. What can we call this tendency to use nouns as if they were verbs? How about anthimeria? Then we can anthimeria this term and warn people against anthimeriaing nouns! In rhetoric, anthimeria, traditionally and more properly called antimeria (from the Greek: á ¼â‚¬ÃŽ ½Ãâ€žÃŽ ¯, antà ­, against, opposite and ÃŽ ¼ÃŽ ­Ã ÃŽ ¿Ãâ€š, mà ©ros, part), is the use of a word as if it were a member of a different word class (part of speech); typically, the use of a noun as if it were a verb. Here are some rants and observations you may enjoy: Writing, Clear and Simple (Link no longer active) Kathy Schenck (Link no longer active) The Grammar Curmudgeon Judy Muller impact as a verb Want to improve your English in five minutes a day? Get a subscription and start receiving our writing tips and exercises daily! Keep learning! Browse the Grammar category, check our popular posts, or choose a related post below:Masters Degree or Master's Degree?"Latter," not "Ladder"What the heck are "learnings"?

Friday, November 22, 2019

The Origin of the Universe Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

The Origin of the Universe - Research Paper Example Not only is it difficult to figure out how a whole universe could appear from nothing, but also no plausible explanation for the mechanism of the explosion itself springs to mind. The only known force in nature capable of affecting the universe as a whole is gravity. Gravity is, however, an attractive force, whereas the explosion requires a repulsive force. The mystery of the explosion lies in the first fraction of a second of the life of the universe. At such early times, the universe was in a state of incredibly high temperature and density, a situation so foreign to laboratory conditions that it is impossible to extrapolate known physics to that realm. The cause of the explosion is shrouded in the extreme conditions of the very early universe. For a while cosmology treated the existence of the universe as a given and concentrated on the consequences of the explosion rather than its cause. In the course of the scientific step-by-step reconstruction of the chronology of the universe , a number of puzzling paradoxes surfaced, of which two are of interest here. The first deals with the strength of the explosion. The push of the Bang was exquisitely well fine-tuned, allowing for the existence of a universe with galaxies, stars, planets, and life. Any other push would have meant either a structureless universe or a universe collapsing back onto itself after a brief existence. Why was the Bang so well engineered? The second paradox deals with the large-scale properties of the universe. The extreme large-scale smoothness of the temperature and of the density of matter cannot be explained by the standard Big Bang model. No known physical process can account for it. What is the origin of this conspiracy? Is our universe very peculiar, that is, did it just start this way by sheer luck -- in the scientific jargon, with very special initial conditions -- or are there mechanisms that can account for the fine-tuned push of the explosion and for the smoothness of the univers e? Two diametrically opposite schools of thought have addressed these paradoxes. The proponents of the so-called anthropic principle state that if the universe were not so fine-tuned, there could be no life in it, and we humans would not be there to witness it. Although this statement is correct, it does not attempt to resolve the paradoxes in terms of physical mechanisms, but relegates them to the status of special initial conditions. In other words, that is the way the universe started because if it had not, we would not be there to witness it. The other school of thought has refused to accept special initial conditions but rather has searched for mechanisms that could account for the observed peculiarities. It is the purpose of this essay to present and to discuss some of the latest models advanced by the second school. The Big Bang When Einstein applied his newly created theory of General Relativity to the universe, he discovered to his dismay that the universe was not static as everybody, including himself, liked to believe at that time. His universe was either contracting or expanding. Rather than exploring the consequences of his findings, Einstein introduced an ad-hoc term into his equation that he called the cosmological term. The cosmological ter

Wednesday, November 20, 2019

Patient satisfaction in primary health care Assignment

Patient satisfaction in primary health care - Assignment Example During such times, nurses have several options to come out of their dilemmas, the most critical among the options being to apply effective leadership and management skills (Morrisey, 2007). Whether nurses are at the lower ranks of the organizational structure or the topmost position, Harris (2008) notes that leadership is a mandatory aspect of their routine roles and thus the need to always exhibit leadership in the most effective way when faced with ethical and or moral dilemma. Based on the above submission on the need for nurses to see leadership as part of their routine roles in solving ethical and moral dilemmas, nurses can clearly be identified as moral agents who are in place to foster specific advocacy changes within the organization. Indeed, I can personally find myself in such a circumstance as a moral agent when I will be faced with the ethical issue of truth telling versus deception. This can happened if an issue I read about happened to me where a patient had gone to the ward to deliver her fourth baby. This woman had had two previous cases of still birth and one case of miscarriage. Upon early diagnosis through ultra scan, it was found that the baby was still in the woman’s womb. Before the test, family members had approached me to inform me of how the woman would react if things did not go well in this instance also. If a result of this nature is presented to me, it would be a big dilemma whether to disclose the truth or to be deceptive till the delivery was over.

Monday, November 18, 2019

Medico Legal Aspects and the Radiographers Scope of Practice Essay - 1

Medico Legal Aspects and the Radiographers Scope of Practice - Essay Example The council’s conduct and competence committee provide a verdict on practices that contravene HCPC’s set standards (HCPC, 2015). Incorporating the law into the field of medical practices gives an insight into the power of the law. The force of the legislation is perhaps the reason for ethical and professionalism in medical practices. The very laws originate ethical concerns and the expectations that the public places on civil servants. This work examines a court case involving physicians and a patient, where the failure of a doctor to stick to the professional requirements caused harm to the patient. The work depicts the judicial proceedings about health matters and elaborates on the right procedures for handling issues at workplaces. The legislation, in this case, relates to the examination of the various health policies, which this work also explains. Based on court proceedings, the radiographer failed to perform an X-ray on the patient. The radiographer worked for the Hertfordshire Hospital University Trust, where he was to give instructions to practicing students. The medical practitioner was supposed to be a role model to the pupils in the Radiography Course. The competence that radiographers exhibit the result from the periods of training they undergo. Power can carry out the actions of an occupation to the expected levels during the time for which you work (The University of Exeter, 2015). Training makes the people concerned to be both fits for the purpose and the fit for practice. The scope of professional practice requires that radiographers work using the safest and the most efficient techniques for the patients (Scope of Professional Practice, 2015). The patient in this case scenario was weak, something that the radiographer, Mr. Porter knew. He was instructed to fetch the patient from another ward and realized his inability to walk by himself. He opted to give the patient a wheelchair, which is  the best action for those who cannot walk (Long, Frank & Enhrlich, 2012).

Saturday, November 16, 2019

Sterilization by Saturated Steam Experiment

Sterilization by Saturated Steam Experiment Nurul Aisha Zainal Abidin Introduction Microorganisms are tiny living cells that inhabit our environment. Most of these microorganisms are harmless, where they do not cause any diseases, hence they are known as non-pathogens (Benowit-West et al., 2009). However, there are some that can cause infections which are termed pathogenic. Certain environments make them necessary that the population of these microorganisms are controlled especially health care facilities, laboratories, food industries, pharmaceutical industries, and more (Hoffman et al., 2004). Sterilisation is an important method to control the microbial population, where it is the process of removing or killing viable microorganisms from equipment or substances. Sterilisation process can be done via several means including heat sterilisation, filtration, chemical sterilisation and radiation sterilisation (Schlegel and Zaborosch, 1993). Among these methods, the most commonly used is heat sterilisation in moist (steam) and dry form as others each have their own disadvantages such as toxic residues, risk of radiation, high cost, and capability of causing physical damage to equipment (Rogers, 2005). Other than heat being used as physical agents for sterilisation, ionising radiation and filtration can also be used. Moist heat (steam) sterilisation uses liquid, heat and pressure to form steam which will kill the microorganisms. This process is recognised for its speed of operation, effectiveness, low risk and cost because steam is only pressurised water in gas phase (Block, 1983). It is known that vegetative cells of most bacteria can be killed within 5-10 minutes at a temperature of 60oC however bacterial spores are thermoduric, where they can survive long exposure to high temperature (Bonewit-West et al., 2009). Thus, steam sterilisation is considered to be effective as it destroys viable microorganisms at 121oC for 15 minutes and prevents them from germinating into bacteria. The high temperature applied denatures the proteins within the bacterial endospores, destroying them (Jha and Ghosha, 2005). Dry heat sterilisation also uses heat to denature the proteins of the bacterial cells. This process involves exposing heat stable solid equipment to a temperature of 160oC for 1-2 hours. However, moist heat is more effective in destroying microorganisms compared to dry heat because water vapour can penetrate into microorganisms more readily than dry air. This heat sterilisation method is done in a metal vessel known as autoclave (Jha and Ghosha, 2005). Another method for sterilisation is tyndallisation which is usually for materials that cannot withstand high temperatures in the autoclave. They are exposed to 100oC heat for 30 minutes to inactivate vegetative cells but not the spores. These spores that survive will germinate to form bacterial cells during incubation at 37oC and then the material being sterilised is again subjected to steam at 100 oC for 30 minutes to kill these bacteria. This cycle is repeated for the next 3 days (Talaro and Talaro, 1993). This experiment was done to determine whether there is a difference between efficacy of heat sterilisation (moist heat and dry) and the requirements necessary for this sterilisation process to be adequate. Aims The aims of this experiment were to understand how a steam sterilizer operates, the role and the importance of having to implement moist heat sterilization process, as well as to identify the basic requirements needed for successful steam sterilization. Materials and Methods As per practical manual from page 56-57 Results Two Thermalog strips were each placed in two Schott bottles; one bottle was tightly capped with no water and the other was loosely capped with water present. Five bottles were prepared and spore strips impregnated with B. Stearothermophilus were placed in bottles 1-4. Some water and paraffin oil was added in bottle 2 and 4 respectively. Schott bottles, bottles 2-4 and a Sterikon plus Bioindicator were sterilised in the autoclave. Thermalog strips were observed after the sterilisation process. 3ml of TSB was added into bottles 1, 2, 3, 5 and the spore strip from bottle 4 was transferred to bottle 5. All the bottles were then incubated. The tables below show the observation made from the experiment. Table 1. The observation of the â€Å"Thermalog† strips in the two Schott bottles with different conditions Table 2. The observation of Sterikon vials with one being sterilized and one without being sterilized Table 3. B. Stearothermophilus spore strips in TSB with different conditions after sterilization and incubation Discussion In the first part of the experiment, steam sterilisation indicator, Thermalog strips are placed in two Schott bottles under different conditions. The tightly capped Schott bottle without any water only had a change of colour within the â€Å"unsafe† zone. This is due to the steam from the steriliser that was not able to enter through the tight cap and reach the Thermalog strip. With no water present in the bottle either, steam could not be produced, giving exposure to dry heat. Hence, complete sterilisation was not achieved as direct contact between the steam and the bottle is needed, alongside its temperature and time parameters (121oC and 15 minutes respectively). In comparison, the loosely capped Schott bottle with added water had a change of colour until the â€Å"safe† zone. Because the Thermalog strip was exposed to moist heat in the form of steam during the sterilisation process, complete sterilisation is achieved. In the second part of the experiment, two Sterikon plus Bioindicator vials are used, which could determine the effectiveness of steam sterilisation. These vials have B. stearothermophilus spores along with a pH indicator in a nutrient-filled broth. Both vials were pink at the beginning of the experiment and incubated for several days. The Bioindicator vial that was put in the steriliser showed no colour change while the vial that was not sterilised turned yellow and only slightly turbid. The sterilised vial had no bacterial growth because the spores did not undergo germination to form bacteria due to successful sterilisation which have completely destroyed all bacterial spores. Therefore, the vial retained its pink colour after incubation. However, the colour change from pink to yellow in the other vial indicates that the spores had germinated into bacteria. This is because the vial was not sterilised, thus the spores were able to grow in a favourable condition, whereby they take up nutrients and produce acid which causes the colour change. These findings show that they are vital for monitoring steam steriliser, ensuring that all spores are properly destroyed. If they are not exposed to its temperature and time parameters, some spores might still survive and germinate. In order to determine that sterilisation process is successful, incubation process is implemented to observe whether these spores could still form new bacteria or whether they really have been destroyed. In the experiment which used strips impregnated with spores of B. stearothermophilus in tryptone soy broth (TSB), bottle 1 appeared to be the most turbid among other bottles, which suggests bacterial growth is sustained. Because bottle 1 was not autoclaved, it did not go through proper sterilisation process prior incubation, thus allowing the spores to germinate from the spore strip. Culturing this unexposed spore strip in bottle 1 therefore acts as a control, as it would not have demonstrated that steam sterilisation was actually successful if bacterial growth was not observed because they could have not been able to germinate at all. Bottle 2, however, shows that steam sterilisation was done successfully as the TSB media does not show any turbidity, thus bacterial spore activity was not there. As mentioned, water was added to bottle 2 before it was tightly capped and put into the autoclave, which evaporated into steam (or moist heat) at a 121oC within the steriliser. The steam formed will then kill the spores directly. Apart from that, bottle 3 was tightly capped and had no water added before it was placed in the autoclave. As a consequence, the moist heat could not possibly have direct contact with the spores to be able to kill them. This meant that the spores were only subjected to dry heat sterilization within the bottle, which clearly showed to be a less effective of a method compared to moist heat sterilisation. Because these spores survived the dry heat sterilisation process, they were able to germinate and form bacterial growth under the favourable conditions during incubation, making the TSB media turbid. If dry heat sterilisation was to be implemented to eradicate spores, a higher temperature would suffice. Furthermore, bottle 5 also showed turbidity to almost the same degree as bottle 3. The spore strip in bottle 5 was initially immersed in paraffin oil in bottle 4, before it was transferred into bottle 5. Other than the tightly capped bottle preventing the moist heat from entering, the o il somewhat acts as a protective barrier for the spores, not even allowing dry heat to have direct contact with the spore strip. Based on these findings, it demonstrates to a certain extent to how the biocidal action of moist and dry heat is different and can be compared. Most importantly, the role and the significance of the requirements needed for each sterilisation method. For moist heat sterilisation, a holding time of 121oC for 15 minutes under a pressure of 101kPa is required. In contrast, dry heat sterilisation needs a holding time of 1-2 hours at a temperature of 160oC (Arora, 2003). Therefore, it can be said that moist heat (steam) can perform faster sterilisation, with higher penetrating power as compared to dry heat (Vasanthakumari, 2007). Furthermore, sterilisation using moist heat is more efficient as it uses a lower temperature for the denaturation of protein and the heat in water is also transferred to substances easily (Greenwood et al., 2007). Hence, it is important to note that for steam to be an ideal sterilant, it must be able to have direct contact with the object (external and internal surface) or substance being sterilised. The reason for this is for its stored energy to be transferred to the object through condensation onto all the surfaces which releases its latent heat. As a result, microorganisms are destroyed. Without this direct steam contact, the sterilisation process would be inadequate (Slatter, 1985). Even so, moist heat sterilisation still has a limitation, where it is not capable of destroying prions in the same way as bacteria and spores. Prions, which are stable self-replicating proteins, are highly infective in the central nervous system tissue and they are highly resistant to heat (Hanlon and Hodges, 2013). Therefore, in order to destroy these prions, dry heat sterilisation may be implemented with a temperature of 200oC. Conclusion Successful and complete steam sterilisation can only be achieved if the material being sterilised have physical contact with moist heat (steam) either from the steriliser or from the water inside the material being vaporised. Without the steam, sterilisation process will not be effective because the dry heat cannot destroy the heat-resistant spores. Furthermore, barriers like oils or fats would also prevent the steam from penetrating. Because there are many interruptions or factors that could influence the efficacy of sterilisation, it is necessary to monitor the process. Thermalog strips can be used to determine if the sterilisation process has met its criteria where the material has been exposed to conditions to be safely sterilised. Sterikon plus Bioindicator vials are also used to monitor whether steam sterilisation has occurred. References Arora, D. R. 2003.Textbook of microbiology. New Delhi: CBS Publishers. Block, S. S. 1983.Disinfection, sterilization, and preservation. Philadelphia: Lea Febiger. Bonewit-West, K., Hunt, S. A. and Applegate, E. J. 2009.Todays medical assistant. St. Louis, Mo.: Saunders/Elsevier. Dunn, C. E. and Chennell, S. 2012.Australian master work health and safety guide. North Ryde, N.S.W.: CCH Australia. Greenwood, M., Seymour, R. A. and Meechan, J. G. 2009.Textbook of human disease in dentistry. Chichester, U.K.: Wiley-Blackwell. Hanlon, G. and Hodges, N. A. 2013.Essential microbiology for pharmacy and pharmaceutical science. Chichester, West Sussex, UK: John Wiley Sons. Hoffman, P. N., Bradley, C., Ayliffe, G. A. J. and Ayliffe, G. A. J. 2004.Disinfection in healthcare. Malden, Mass: Blackwell Pub. Jha, T. B. and Ghosha, B. 2005.Plant tissue culture. Hyderabad: Universities Press. Rogers, W. J. 2005.Sterilisation of polymer healthcare products. Shawbury, Shrewsbury, Shropshire, UK: Rapra Technology. Schlegel, H. G. and Zaborosch, C. 1993.General microbiology. Cambridge [England]: Cambridge University Press. Slatter, D. H. 1985.Textbook of small animal surgery. Philadelphia: W.B. Saunders. Talaro, K. P. and Talaro, A. 1993.Foundations in microbiology. Dubuque, Iowa: W.C. Brown. Vasanthakumari, R. 2007.Textbook of Microbiology. New Delhi: BI Publications Pvt Ltd.

Thursday, November 14, 2019

Urban and the Council of Clermont :: European Europe History

Urban and the Council of Clermont There are many accounts of that day in November, 1095. Some were written by monks, others by bishops, and even a few by warriors themselves. Historians are constantly asking, "What exactly did Pope Urban II say at the council of Clermont to persuade Christians to set forth on such a difficult venture as the Crusades?" One man, an early 12th century cleric named Fulcher of Chartres wrote perhaps the best historical chronicle of the events at Clermont and the speech of Urban II. Fulcher begins his account with a prologue that states how blessed the journeymen of the Crusades were to take up such a conquest. He follows this by speaking on the Council of Clermont. Fulcher describes Pope Urban II and what he heard was happening to the Christians in the east. What comes next in Flucher's writing is a long speech, allegedly quoted from Urban II himself. In the speech, Urban first lectures his fellow clergymen regarding problems in the church, saying that they should "set [themselves] right before [they] do others"1 Fulcher, 51. Urban II next, as according to Fulcher, declares the doctrine of the church and re-instates the idea of the "Truce"2 McGinty, 52. He also discussed various crimes for which the criminal would be excommunicated from the Church. In Fulcher's third section, Urban speaks of the "evils" in the east. He says, "there is work to do, you must help your brothers living in the Orient, who need your aid for which they have cried out many times"3 Fulcher, 52. He gives word that these "brothers" (Christians) are being threatened by the Turks who must be pushed back to Persia. Urban will grant remission of sins for their services. In closing, Fulcher tells how Urban II presses on to say, " Let no delay postpone the journey"4 Fulcher, 53. Fulcher of Chartres' account of what happened at the Council of Clermont is a great piece, full of detail. Fulcher obviously held Pope Urban II in high regard. Throughout his chronicle, he douses him with compliments saying that he is " a man distinguished in life and character."5 Fulcher, 49. It might not seem like much now to put the Church's interests before all others; however, in the Middle Ages people were extremely religious. The better Christian one was, the better man he was. Urban II speaks to his clergy about the problems in the Church and as Fulcher tells the story he seems he seems rightly bestowed with the compliments Fulcher gives him.

Monday, November 11, 2019

Professional Cheating Websites Essay

Random interview is the method that we are going to use for gathering data because in interviews information is obtained through inquiry and recorded by enumerators. Structured interviews are performed by using survey forms, whereas open interviews are notes taken while talking with respondents. The notes are subsequently structured interpreted foe further analysis. Open-ended interviews, which need to be interpreted and analyze even during the interview, have to be carried out by well-trained observers and/or enumerators. Generally, structured interviews are conducted with a well-designed form already established. Forms are filled in by researches, instead of respondents, and in that it differs from questionnaires. While this approach is more expensive, more complicated questions can be asked and data can be validated as it is collected, improving data quality. Interviews can be undertaken with variety of data sources, and through alternative media, such as by telephone or in person . The people who are going to interview are the maritime students of Dr,Yanga’s Colleges at DYCI. The interviewee came from any level of BSMT and BSMarE maritime student .It could be ages 16 to 18 above male or female. Confessions of a Professional College Cheater. IT WILL COME as news to no one who reads Dave Tomar’s new book that college kids cheat as enthusiastically and ritually as they tailgate and copulate, especially since Harvard recently announced that nearly half of the 279 students in a single â€Å"Introduction to Congress† class are under investigation for academic dishonesty. In the ethically challenged haze of freshman dormitory life I did it myself, writing an occasional paper for an attractive or underperforming friend, and it never really occurred to me that this was wrong until I became a college professor and sat outraged on the other side of the desk, interrogating a barely literate student who had suddenly blossomed into an eloquent critic of Milton’s Paradise Lost. And after reading The Shadow Scholar I’m eyeing my current crop of students with an entirely new level of suspicion. Tomar’s book grew out of an article, penned under the name â€Å"Ed Dante† in The Chronicle of Higher Education in November 2010, that became the most widely read piece in the Chronicle’s history. The article, and now the book, document the astounding scale and sophistication of cheating in today’s wired world, which the author knows well: he worked for ten years at highly organized Internet companies, writing term papers, class projects, and even a dissertation. In the wickedest of ironies, he found his employers through a website that aims to prevent cheating by exposing the worst offenders. At this website, an interested reader will find links to two hundred such companies, all accepting Paypal, MasterCard, and Visa, and all eager to make your college experience utterly painless. One site (CustomWritings.com) provides statistics, including (at press time) a 97 percent satisfaction rate and 1,373,890 pages written. I don’t now how much to trust a company that relies on its customers’ willingness to lie, but if those numbers are true, then this firm alone has produced over 170,000 of the 7-to-10-page papers usually assigned in introductory level classes. Many sites promise that their writers hold at least an M.A. or a Ph.D., and nearly all of them guarantee that the customer’s essay will cruise through the plagiarism-detection software that most American universities have purchased, at a tremendous cost, as the silver bu llet in their anti-cheating arsenal. As Tomar describes the process, the writers for his former employer log in to the company’s website and select an assignment from an online bulletin board. Students provide the topic and the deadline, and specific guidelines from their instructor, and the desired citation style. Some students even ship required course texts to their hired hand: Tomar claims this practice larded his shelves with thousands of dollars worth of books on constitutional history, literature, business, and psychology. But that was one of the few perks. Like a high-tech whipping boy, Tomar says he took on so much work that he ruined his health and his relationships, all so that the pampered and unprepared could enjoy a painless college experience. The cheery photos of carefree students on the professional cheating websites bear this out. As in the promotional materials distributed by the universities themselves, everyone is always smiling. Tomar is very, very angry, and although he comes to loathe the students who hire him, the real target of his ire is the universities. He is himself a graduate of Rutgers, and he seems genuinely traumatized by his own stint on the banks of the old Raritan, which he believes left him without the skills to land any real job other than writing fraudulent college papers. From this experience he gleans several ways that higher education in America has gone awry. â€Å"It’s not simply that some colleges are structured more like corporations than like places of learning,† Tomar notes, but that they are structured like failing businesses that â€Å"don’t give a crap about customer service or quality assurance.† This is one of Tomar’s more astute observations. While nimble businesses, from Lego to Apple, have made customers fall in love with their reinvented products, universities still persist in replicating the early twentieth-century factory model espoused by Henry Ford: customers can have a car painted any color they want â€Å"so long as it is black.† As a teacher of Shakespeare, I benefit from this model all the time: students from across the disciplines are forced to take my classes to fill various requirements, whether or not they will ever use iambic pentameter. It pays my bills. But where such requiremen ts do not correspond to clearly defined and valuable outcomes for students, they also contribute to the truly frightening $1 trillion in outstanding U.S. student debt that, as Tomar notes, has mostly been accumulated in the past four years. The driving engines of that debt remain the for-profit degree mills such as theUniversity of Phoenix, which do not escape Tomar’s fury. â€Å"The work assigned at such institutions was so easy, the standards so low, and the priorities so far removed from the interests of honest student evaluation† that students might be forgiven for turning to the free market to meet their intellectual needs. As the Harvard cheating scandal has affirmed, however, even the best universities have some such slack in the system. Students caught up in the investigation have reported that the course was notoriously known as â€Å"an easy A† with take-home exams and low standards. Combine such factors with the universities’ generally sluggish stance toward technology, Tomar suggests, and the cheating he documents is nearly inevitable. These points are well made, but not much else in this padded book has the same force. In discussing his erstwhile career, Tomar has called himself a master â€Å"bullshit artist,† and he boasts that he knows all the â€Å"little tricks† for churning out papers, â€Å"like fluffing sentences with unnecessary clauses or adding gratuitous lines summarizing previous claims.† Yet Tomar’s book may prove to be his bullshitting pià ¨ce de rà ©sistance, as it employs these same techniques at length, including notes and a bibliography drawn mostly from blogs and websites. For a brief moment, it seems as if this might be some sort of brilliant meta-narrative: a Joycean performance of the sloppiness, clichà ©, and superficial analysis that passes for writing in our universities today. But as Tomar reaches his solemn conclusion, explaining that he has attempted to describe â€Å"the things that I had come to know, with the hope that it could help all of us,† this begins to seem less likely. The problem is that The Shadow Scholar’s argument never really achieves the escape velocity that would propel it beyond the author’s own miscellaneous grievances. By his own admission, Tomar doesn’t know how to use a library and doesn’t have â€Å"a fuck’s clue how to do research if my Internet is down and my phone battery i s dead.† For Tomar this is a point of pride, because the ease with which he manipulates the system—tricking all those doddering professors—shows that libraries and library-based curricula are hopeless anyway. Again, I half-sympathize: if any professors still ask students to conduct research without online resources, they are clearly acting negligently. But surely the more responsible—and the more common—approach is to guide students through the digital archives, accepting that they use Wikipedia and Google, but teaching them that this should be the beginning rather than the end of their research. But Tomar obviously never learned this lesson, and his argument rarely reaches beyond the level of Googling, like one of those machine-authored books that use an algorithm to collate information about a given topic. (If this is unfamiliar, see the 345,000 titles by â€Å"Lambert M. Surhone† on Barnesandnoble.com.) When arguing, for example, that American education l oads students with debt without providing the skills to pay it back, Tomar writes that â€Å"according to the Guardian, ‘student loans have been stripped of nearly all basic consumer protections.’† Nothing wrong with that, except that after continuing this quotation for some length, he launches directly into a new paragraph on â€Å"An article in Mother Jones,† and this takes us to a paragraph relating what â€Å"the Washington Post† surmises, before a final section provides the truth â€Å"according to the New York Times.† The already underdeveloped argument must also share space with a memoir of the author’s misguided youth, and while Dave Tomar finds his lead character fascinating, his will probably be a minority response. After the tenth account of Tomar getting stoned, or reeling out of a bar to vomit, it seems worth asking whether he may have borne some responsibility for his failure to find academic fulfillment and develop marketable skills on campus. One suspects that Tomar was very good at churning out â€Å"C-† papers and that some of his clients got exactly what they deserved. Although The Shadow Scholar is a failed invective, it is an extremely timely reminder that we would be unwise to brush off accounts of cheating at Harvard or our local junior college as a few bad apples. To prevent the offenses that Tomar describes, professors will also need to become more proficient at pedagogies both old and new. Our first priority may be teaching students to navigate an online world where the meaning of intellectual property is in flux. Universities clearly must also do a better job teaching students actual skills rather than running them through hoops until they accumulate enough seat time, measured in dollars and hours, to graduate. Just as important as such innovation, however, is the very traditional work of forming tutorial relationships that will model intellectual responsibility and demonstrate that thinking, rather than paying someone to do it for you, can be its own reward. Studies find more Students Cheating, with High Achievers no Exception. Large-scale cheating has been uncovered over the last year at some of the nation’s most competitive schools, like Stuyvesant High Schoolin Manhattan, the Air Force Academy and, most recently, Harvard. Studies of student behavior and attitudes show that a majority of students violate standards of academic integrity to some degree, and that high achievers are just as likely to do it as others. Moreover, there is evidence that the problem has worsened over the last few decades. Experts say the reasons are relatively simple: Cheating has become easier and more widely tolerated, and both schools and parents have failed to give students strong, repetitive messages about what is allowed and what is prohibited. â€Å"I don’t think there’s any question that students have become more competitive, under more pressure, and, as a result, tend to excuse more from themselves and other students, and that’s abetted by the adults around them,† said Donald L. McCabe, a professor at the Rutgers University Business School, and a leading researcher on cheating. â€Å"There have always been struggling students who cheat to survive,† he said. â€Å"But more and more, there are students at the top who cheat to thrive.† Internet access has made cheating easier, enabling students to connect instantly with answers, friends to consult and works to plagiarize. And generations of research has shown that a major factor in unethical behavior is simply how easy or hard it is. A recent study by Jeffrey A. Roberts and David M. Wasieleski at Duquesne University found that the more online tools college students were allowed to use to complete an assignment, the more likely they were to copy the work of others. The Internet has changed attitudes, as a world of instant downloading, searching, cutting and pasting has loosened some ideas of ownership and authorship. An increased emphasis on having students work in teams may also have played a role. â€Å"Students are surprisingly unclear about what constitutes plagiarism or cheating,† said Mr. Wasieleski, an associate professor of management. Howard Gardner, a professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, said that over the 20 years he has studied professional and academic integrity, â€Å"the ethical muscles have atrophied,† in part because of a culture that exalts success, however it is attained. He said the attitude he has found among students at elite colleges is: â€Å"We want to be famous and successful, we think our colleagues are cutting corners, we’ll be damned if we’ll lose out to them, and some day, when we’ve made it, we’ll be role models. But until then, give us a pass.† Numerous projects and research studies have shown that frequently reinforcing standards, to both students and teachers, can lessen cheating. But experts say most schools fail to do so. â€Å"Institutions do a poor job of making those boundaries clear and consistent, of educating students about them, of enforcing them, and of giving teachers a clear process to follow through on them,† said Laurie L. Hazard, director of the Academic Center for Excellence at Bryant University. In the programs that colleges run to help new students make the transition from high school, students are counseled on everything from food to friendships, but â€Å"little or no time is spent on cheating,† she said. A 2010 survey of Yale undergraduates by The Yale Daily News showed that most had never read the school’s policy on academic honesty, and most were unsure of the rules on sharing or recycling their work. In surveys of high school students, the Josephson Institute of Ethics, which advises schools on ethics education, has found that about three-fifths admit to having cheated in the previous year — and about four-fifths say their own ethics are above average. Few schools â€Å"place any meaningful emphasis on integrity, academic or otherwise, and colleges are even more indifferent than high schools,† said Michael Josephson, president of the institute. â€Å"When you start giving take-home exams and telling kids not to talk about it, or you let them carry smartphones into tests, it’s an invitation to cheating,† he said. The case that Harvard revealed in late August involved a take-home final exam in an undergraduate course with 279 students. The university has not yet held hearings on the charges, which may take months to resolve. Officials said similarities in test papers suggested that nearly half the class had broken the rules against plagiarism and working together; some of the accused students said their behavior was innocent, or fell into gray areas. Mr. McCabe’s surveys, conducted around the country, have found that most college students see collaborating with others, even when it is forbidden, as a minor offense or no offense at all. Nearly half take the same view of paraphrasing or copying someone else’s work without attribution. And most high school teachers and college professors surveyed fail to pursue some of the violations they find. Experts say that along with students, schools and technology, parents are also to blame. They cite surveys, anecdotal impressions and the work of researchers like Jean M. Twenge, author of the book â€Å"Generation Me,† to make the case that since the 1960s, parenting has shifted away from emphasizing obedience, honor and respect for authority to promoting children’s happiness while stoking their ambitions for material success. â€Å"We have a culture now where we have real trouble accepting that our kids make mistakes and fail, and when they do, we tend to blame someone else,† said Tricia Bertram Gallant, author of â€Å"Creating the Ethical Academy,† and director of the academic integrity office at the University of California at San Diego. â€Å"Thirty, 40 years ago, the parent would come in and grab the kid by the ear, yell at him and drag him home.† Educators tell tales of students who grew up taking for granted not only that their highly involved parents would help with schoolwork but that the â€Å"help† would strain the definition of the word. Ms. Gallant recalled giving integrity counseling to a student who would send research papers to her mother to review before turning them in — and saw nothing wrong in that. One paper, it turned out, her mother had extensively rewritten — and extensively plagiarized. The Good News in the Atlanta and D.C. School Cheating Scandals With the possible exception of tot-murdering moms and professional basketball players who jilt their fans on live television, there is no more reviled figure in American life than Bernie Madoff. Portrayed on the cover of New York magazine in Heath-Ledger-as-Joker makeup, he has been variously described as a sociopath, a financial serial killer, and the devil incarnate. What nobody has said, however, is that Madoff was the victim of a profession that puts relentless pressure on money managers to publicly report their success in the market. And, while plenty of deserved scorn has been heaped on the auxiliary financial institutions and hapless federal regulators who allowed his fraud to unfold for decades, nobody has suggested that those lapses in any way mitigate Madoff’s culpability in his crimes. Society has taken away all of Madoff’s money and freedom, but it has left him with one thing: the dignity inheren t in possessing moral responsibility for doing wrong. It has been less respectful, unfortunately, to educators in our public schools. Recent weeks have seen reports of a terrible cheating scandal in Atlanta; a Georgia state investigation implicated scores of teachers and principals of systematically falsifying student test scores. Earlier this year, USA Today revealed evidence of test score manipulation in the District of Columbia. Similar scandals have erupted over the years in Houston, Oakland, Dallas, Chicago, and elsewhere, all tied to the pressure educators feel to show evidence of student learning on standardized tests. And, every time news of cheating breaks, opponents of standardized testing and accountability in public education have been quick to deflect blame from morally challenged educators and aim it toward the tests themselves. When asked about Atlanta, noted school reform apostate Diane Ravitch pointed the finger at the federal No Child Left Behind law, saying that, when high-stakes incentives are attached to test scores, we are â€Å"virtually inviting† teachers to cheat. At the Daily Kos, r eaders were told that â€Å"the tests, and the stakes attached to them, are the issue. No rational person can look at cheating this widespread and decide its existence is about the individuals, however blameworthy their behavior may be.† One Atlanta-area teacher put it this way: â€Å"Anybody whose job is tied to performance, it is a setup.† In search of a theory to back up these assertions, testing opponents often invoke â€Å"Campbell’s Law,† an adage put forth in the 1970s by social scientist Donald Campbell. It holds that â€Å"[t]he more any quantitative social indicator [e.g. standardized testing] is used for social decision-making, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures.† As a way of understanding education policy, or anything else, Campbell’s Law is both inaccurate and banal. In reality, most people are quite adept at resisting corruption pressure, which is why the vast majority of teachers whose students take standardized tests do not cheat. And, while some do, the fallibility of humankind has been known for a long time. So I hereby coin Carey’s Law, which holds that trite observations are more likely to be regarded as sacred principles if someone happen s to describe them as laws. TO BE SURE, people (and teachers) will succumb to dishonesty. They cheat on their taxes, spouses, and golf partners. Cheating corrodes trust in all things, especially education. Students whose test scores are manipulated upward don’t the get the extra attention they need. And, since teachers are increasingly being evaluated by how much their students’ test scores improve, a teacher who inflates scores could potentially cost her colleagues in the next grade of their job performance. But cheating also means that public schools finally care enough about student performance that some ethically challenged educators have chosen to cheat. This is far better than the alternative, where learning is so incidental and non-transparent that people of low character can’t be bothered to lie about it. Blaming cheating on the test amounts to infantilizing teachers, moving teaching 180 degrees away from the kind of professionalization that teacher advocates often profess to support. Instead of doing away with the pressures of a performance-based system, the best way to combat cheating is by buil ding institutions that have systems and organizational cultures that minimize the amount of corruption and abuse that occurs. This is harder to do in some places than in others. The District of Columbia, for example, is not exactly a bastion of civic virtue. Half the members of our city council currently stand accused of some form of misconduct, including council president Kwame Brown, who is being investigated by the U.S. Attorney for matters regarding the use of hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign funds. Nobody, by the way, is blaming the corruption pressures inherent to our vote-intensive election system for Brown’s alleged misdeeds. Indeed, it’s not a coincidence that cheating scandals tend to erupt in municipalities whose public institutions suffer from corruption. But, when the Atlanta police department was rocked by accusations that officers falsified warrants, planted evidence, and gunned down a 92-year old woman in a botched drug raid, national commentators didn’t pin the blame on a system that holds police departments accountable for solving crimes. Corruption, educat ional or otherwise, should be fought with strong law enforcement, the election of public officials with integrity, and the vigilance of citizen’s groups and a watchful press. The Securities and Exchange Commission exists because lawmakers correctly assume that the pressures and temptations of making money are so great that companies and financial actors can’t be trusted. Other than lunatic objectivistsand Wall Street water-carriers, nobody reacted to Madoff, Enron, or WorldCom by calling for less enforcement and public reporting of information. Instead, they rightly called for more. Finally, we should never forget that cheating in public education long predates the advent of standardized testing and accountability. Back then, it happened in the form of students who were ill-taught and passed along through grades until they were handed a diploma despite their inability to read, write, work with numbers, or otherwise perform any of the skills and tasks necessary to make a decent life in the modern world. Often, their children were sent back into the very same dysfunctional systems to begin the cycle anew. The only difference was, that kind of cheating didn’t result in state investigations, newspapers headlines, and calls for the responsible parties to be thrown in jail. The new way we structure testing and reward and punish people for their actions with regard to that testing is better for students—and even teachers—in the long run. Kevin Carey is the policy director of Education Sector, a think tank in Washington, D.C. Cheating is Cheating is Cheating. MANILA, Philippines — DEAR CHICO AND DELAMAR†¦I do a little tutoring on the side to earn some extra money while in college, and I’ve become friends with most of my students as they are mostly just a few years younger than I am. We often still communicate with each other even after I’ve stopped tutoring them. One of the guys that I’ve become close to has recently come to me and tearfully confided that he cheated in an exam and ended up winning an award because of it. I was very disappointed by what he did, because he’s a very smart kid and has a generally sterling academic record. He says that he only did it because his family was going to a really rough patch and he didn’t want an academic failure to compound their problems. He certainly seems guilty over it, and has promised me to never do it again because it wasn’t worth the guilt. What I’m torn about is whether I should tell the school about it. I feel bad about what heà ¢â‚¬â„¢s done, but telling the school would possibly ruin his reputation and his chances at getting into a great college. Should I just let it go and trust that he won’t do it again? -Leonard CHICO SAYS†¦I must admit, this is a tough one. It’s the classic choice between doing the kind thing and doing the right thing. I can’t tell you what is the right thing to do, but what I can do is tell you is what I’d do. I don’t know if I’d have the heart to turn him in. Even if I knew that on paper it’s the right thing to do, I don’t know if I’d muster the resolve. If you can’t choose between the two, you can always try and convince him to do the right thing for himself. Besides, it’s his misdeed that’s causing all this guilt, so he is the best person to right this particular wrong. I’m sure most people would be like, what’s the big deal? He’s learned his lesson, and everybody cheats every now and then, so why ruin a promising future? But remember, somebody who deserved that award was robbed of it. No matter how big or small the accolade, someone else deserved to get that award. And if a young mind gets the idea that he can get away with robbing someone of something as long as he doesn’t get caught, then who is to say that it will stop here? Who is to say that some of the crooked people in high places didn’t get their start with petty â€Å"crimes† like cheating in exams? Leave this sliding doors moment for him to decide. He can opt to leave things as they are and move on, or he can step up to the plate and right the wrong with his own hands, the very hands that caused the injustice in the first place. If he thinks the right thing for him to do is to own up to the cheating, then there is no other recourse but to bite the bullet and confess, just like if you feel it is your duty to report him, then you are beholden to yourself to do so. For all you know, him confessing may be a bitch to handle now, but it could also be the best thing that ever happened to him. Character is hard to come by these days. Something like this could actually build him some. Do what feels right to you at this moment; in difficult situations like these, it’s the best you can do. DELAMAR SAYS†¦There is no way you can be sure he won’t do it again. There is no way that you can be sure that the next time a similar situation happens he won’t take the easy way of cheating again. In his mind he might justify cheating as long as he can say he did it for his family. And did he really do it just to not add on to his family problems? And would it really have added to his family’s problems? Isn’t it understandable that when families go through problems children’s school work do suffer? Did he really do it for family? Or, did he do it for himself? If there was a way to make sure this really was a one time and only a one time thing, most people will say why not let it pass without consequence? But that’s the thing, there is no way you can tell. And the one thing that needs to be considered more than just whether he will do it again or not is this — him cheating earned him an award. Which means: his cheating deprived someone of an award that would have been legitimately earned. He took it from somebody else who would have rightly earned it. And in my opinion, that is certainly not fair. I think this problem is a question of being understanding to someone who was just really pushed to the edge or do you consider this as a great opportunity to learn a very hard lesson too. The lesson that cheating is cheating is cheating. No matter what your justification is it is still a wrong that has consequences. The consequence that is so great, at the cost of his good reputation being tarnished and risking his entrance to a good college, that he will never cheat again. Cheating can destroy all your previous honest efforts. That is a great lesson he will never forget. And also he has to learn that his cheating deprived someone of that award. And these things if he has to pay the consequence will surely send a message that cheating isn’t worth it. He will learn that he just has to live with not performing well when his family is going through something rather than to automatically cheat. Your decision lies with how well you know your student. Will this serve as a lesson he will never forget and never do again? Or, is this his chance to learn at this point and painfully that there are consequences to the actions we do? What can your conscience live with? Whatever you decide I just hope the person who might have been deprived of that award the student earned with his cheating efforts will still get what he deserves. Maybe you can figure out a way to punish the act of cheating but at the same time give him some leeway because he did come forward to admit his wrongdoing? In my opinion the best way is to show him that this act cannot go without consequence, some consequence. You can argue on his behalf that the punishment be less severe so as not to risk his college entrance but he certainly has to understand that he cannot get away with cheating without paying the price. Trick or Cheat. Cheat. It’s probably something that we’ve done at least once in our academic life. Whether through hidden answer sheets, information shared with friends from different sections, or just taking a peek at a seatmate’s paper, not very many of us can claim to be innocent in this regard. Penelope (not her real name) a college senior at a school in Manila’s University Belt, admits to be cheating in exams since she was in fourth year high school. â€Å"I needed to,† she justifies. â€Å"We had to memorize the formulas in our Physics class and we weren’t allowed to have an index card to look at. I was a candidate to become an outstanding student at the time and I didn’t want to fail that exam.† Aside from looking at her seatmate’s paper, she also had a small paper with all the needed formulas hidden in her socks. Penelope has never been caught, but on the occasion that she is, she says she plans to apologize to the teacher. â€Å"But t hat doesn’t mean I’ll stop. I believe cheating is one of the elements of being a student,† she says. Penelope’s story is something that is replicated in the lives of other students across the city. Just like Penelope, Nicole (not her real name) began cheating in exams in high school, mainly because everyone else in her class was doing it. â€Å"It wasn’t intentional at first. The examiner was out of the room, and I took the liberty to check my notes in Biology and compare if my answers were correct. I found it really rewarding to get a perfect score,† she recalls. But unlike Penelope, Nicole was unlucky enough to get caught. â€Å"I decided not to do it anymore and try to rely on my full capacity to answer all subsequent tests,† she says. However, â€Å"try† is the important word in Nicole’s statement. When asked if getting caught stopped her from cheating, her reply is short and direct to the point: â€Å"Not really.† MODERN CHEATING The temptation to cheat is even easier for today’s technologically-advanced youth. With mobile phones making the transmission of messages easier and the Internet making the sharing of information much quicker, today’s Filipino student can just as easily download his answers from a computer as he can from looking at his seatmate’s answers. However, it would seem that the tried and tested technique of looking at the answer of seatmates, passing around notes, and â€Å"reliable† classmates are the methods preferred by today’s young Filipinos. â€Å"If you give people answers, they give you answers back,† says Elle (not her real name). â€Å"My two friends and I would form a triangle with our seats — we call it the Triangle Offense. It gave us good angles. I also ask people who’ve taken the tests earlier for questions and answers.† Mark (not his real name) also relied on his classmates to get a higher grade than the one he would have otherwise received on his tests. â€Å"Back in high school, teachers would have us exchange papers with our fellow classmates and we would have to honestly mark each others tests. It wasn’t me who changed the answers, but my seatmate who’s marking it. That’s what made it possible,† he says. Just like Nicole, Elle has already been caught cheating. And just like Nicole, Elle says this hasn’t stopped her from cheating. â€Å"I’ve been caught, and I just made pa-cute and joked around. I charmed the teacher,† she says. â€Å"Getting caught didn’t stop me from cheating. It empowered me even more.† CHEAT BUSTERS If cheating seems unavoidable, what can school administrations do? Preventing behavior like this from occurring in the first place seems to be the approach being taken by educational institutions. The De La Salle University, for instance, has a Discipline Office (DO), which promotes students discipline, maintains peace, order and cleanliness in the University, and seeks to prevent, rather than correct, unseemly student behavior. Nimpha Baldeo, the DO head, says that her office conducts regular seminars and lectures on values for teachers, parents, and students, and comes out with publications on these topics such as modules, a DO Guide, and a DO Bulletin. â€Å"Discipline awareness is also celebrated every October by the academic community with exhibits and forums to intensify the information drive on University policies, rules and regulations,† she says. â€Å"The University also recently established the Compliance Office to ensure that all significant requirements necessary for compliance with law, regulation, or other binding rules in and outside the University are in place.† Students who are caught cheating are not immediately suspended or expelled, rather, they are put under probation and exposed to a series of seminars and related activities on values formation and clarification. DLSU also curbs plagiarism and protects intellectual rights. Academic papers have to cite its sources, whether from open source references like Wikipedia or from traditional materials, and written permission from concerned faculty members are required if a student intends to submit the same work to another course for extra credit. A MATTER OF TRUST Alexandra (not her real name), a literature professor for two years at a prominent university in Quezon City, has a much more personal view of how to stop cheating among the student body. Alexandra says that in her short years of teaching, she has not yet encountered a case of cheating in her class. While part of this is because most of her examinations are essay-based, she also says that this is because she trusts that her students know better than to cheat. â€Å"When I give objective tests, I don’t patrol. You could say I don’t even really check,† she reveals. â€Å"I feel it’s a very obvious sign of not trusting them. These kids are in college. it’s no longer high school or grade school. What they do with their education is their business. I’m there to guide and instruct, but I’m not there to be their mother. Show them that you trust them somehow, and hopefully, they’ll live up to it.† Alexandra says that rather than looking to change how students behave, educators should instead look into themselves and find out if they are the ones contributing to the problem. â€Å"I think cheating can be curbed, because I honestly think that students cheat if they feel that it’s impossible,† she says. â€Å"And impossibility is a result of demanding too much output when you haven’t even put much in to begin with. If you’re a good educator, students won’t feel the need to cheat.† ——————————————– [ 1 ]. New Republic, by Blaine Greteman, September 12, 2012 [ 2 ]. The New York Times, by Richard Perez-Peà ±a, September 7, 2012 [ 3 ]. New Republic, Kevin Carey, July 19, 2011 [ 4 ]. Manila Bulletin Publishing Corporation, Chico and Delamar, November 9, 2011 [ 5 ]. Manila Bulletin Publishing Corporation, Ronald S. Lim, November 12, 2009