Article Critique Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Article Critique - Research Paper Example The model was measured as the best. Question 3: The key aspects noted on the article is that social disparities may have been a factor in the study since the community would not allow an individual who is sick and needs blood not to be given since this will cause problems in the community between the patients family and the entire community. Question 4: The study of Jehovah Witness can be used for future research on behavioral change within this population group to deriver to the society and culture more information that are not applicable and thus able to curb the ones may cause death to an individual. Question 5: According to the article the limitation of this study is that behavioral changes theories are not universally accepted and thus they are criticized by the community. Transtheoretical theory may be affected since it emphasizes change model for it to be applicable since the community is on there

Wastewater Management Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Wastewater Management - Essay Example Considering the sewer systems, earlier sewer systems were combined. They were designed to enable the collection of sanitary and storm wastewater in a single system. As such, they prevented flooding by warding off water from roofs and streets. As a result, early sanitarians concluded that the combined systems did provide adequate health protection. In recent times, this is known as Attached Growth Processes. Wastewater passes over a media along with air (oxygen). Methods like trickling filters and biotowers are effective in removing biodegradable organic wastewater materials. However effective these methods are, the passage of organic matter over oxygen releases some pollutants like poisonous gases like Ammonia and infectious micro-organisms that contaminate the water causing deadly diseases. There are advanced tertiary methods like the addition of chemical to primary clarifiers as a way of removing phosphorus and nitrogen. However, this is viewed as advanced treatment method hence em ployed when some specific wastewater constituents cannot be removed. An example of an advanced method is the Bardenpho-plant that involves the passage of Ammonia gas through several zones (Assano, 2007).

Data Multimedia Images

Data Multimedia Images Chapter I Introduction 1.1 What is meant by Multimedia Data? A number of data types can be characterized as multimedia data types. These data types are normally the essentials for the building blocks of core multimedia environments, platforms and integrating tools. The basic types can be described as text, images, audio, video and graphic objects. Following is a detailed explanation for the same. Text Text can be stored in a variety of different forms. In addition to American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII) based files, text is usually stored in spreadsheets, annotations, processor files, databases and common multimedia objects. The task of text storage is becoming more and more complex due to the easy availability and abundance of Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs) and text fonts, permitting unique effects such as text color, text shade etc. Images Digitalized images are nothing but a string of pixels that signify an area in the user’s graphical exhibit. There is an immense variation in the quality and dimension of storage for motionless images. For motionless (still) images, the space overhead varies with respect to complexity, size, resolution and compression format used to store any given image. The frequently used and accepted image formats (file extensions) consist of bmp, jpeg, tiff and png. Audio Audio, being another frequently used data type is relatively space intensive. A minute of sound takes up to 3 Megabytes (MB) of space. Numerous methods can be deployed to compress an audio into suitable formats. Video Another data type which consumes majority of space is categorized as the digitalized video data type. Videos are normally stored as a series of frames, the capacity of which depends on its resolution. A solo video frame can take up to 1 MB of space. Continuous transfer rate is needed to get a reasonable video playback with its proper transmission, compression, and decompression. Graphic Objects This data type consists of unique data structures that can define 2D and 3D shapes which further helps in defining multimedia objects. Today one can use different formats for image applications and video-editing applications. To list few examples Computer Aided Design (CAD) and Computer Aided Manufacturing (CAM) are graphic objects 1.2 How is Multimedia Data Different? Theoretically multimedia data should be considered like any regular data based on the data types for instance numbers, dates and characters. Though, there are a few challenges that arise from multimedia as described in [2]: Multimedia data is usually captured with various unreliable capturing techniques such as image processing. These multimedia processing techniques require capabilities for handling these various available methods of capturing content, this includes both automated and manual methods. In multimedia database, the queries created by the user rarely come back with textual answer. To a certain extent, the answer to user query is a compound multimedia presentation that the user can glance through at one’s leisure. The size of the multimedia data being large not only affects the storage, retrieval but also the transmission of data. Time to retrieve information may be vital while accessing video and audio databases, for example Video on Demand. Automatic feature extraction and Indexing: User explicitly submits the attribute values of objects inserted into the database in contrast to advanced tools with conservative databases, such as image processing and pattern recognition tools for images to extract the various features and content of multimedia objects. Special data structures for storage and indexing are needed due to the large size of data. 1.3 Basic Approaches for Data Retrieval Data management is being implemented since long. Many approaches have also been invented for the same to manage and inquire various types of data in the computer systems. The commonly used approaches for data management comprise of conventional database system, information retrieval system, content based retrieval system and graph/ tree pattern matching. The details for the same are as follows: Conventional database system It is the most extensively used approach to manage as well as investigate structured data. Data in a database system must match to some predefined structures and limitations (schema’s). The user should specify the data objects to be retrieved and the tables from which data has to be extracted. The user also has to predicate on which the retrieval of data will be based to formulate a database query. SQL, a query language has a restricted syntax and vocabulary that can be used for such databases. Information retrieval (IR) system This system is prominently used to search enormous text collections; where in the content of the data (text) is illustrated with the help of an indexer using keywords or a textual summary. The query demands are expressed in terms of keywords or natural language. For instance, searching for an image or video, the user is required to describe using words and also need means to store large amount of metadata in textual form. Content based retrieval (CBR) system This approach facilitates in the retrieval of multimedia objects from an enormous collection. The retrieval is based on various features such as color, texture and shape which can be extracted automatically from the objects. Though keyword can be considered a feature for textual data, conventional retrieval of information has a higher performance as compared to content-based retrieval. This is due to the fact that keyword has the demonstrated ability to characterize semantics while no other features have revealed convincing semantic describing capability. A key disadvantage of this particular approach is its lack of accuracy. Graph or tree pattern matching This particular approach seeks the retrieval of object sub-graphs from an object graph as per several designated patterns. Chapter II Data Structures for Multimedia Storage Many modern database applications deal with large amounts of multidimensional data. Multimedia content-based retrieval is one of the examples. Access Methods are essential in order to deal with multidimensional data efficiently. They are used to access selective data from a big collection. 2.1 Importance of Access Methods Efficient spatial selection support is the key purpose of access methods. These include range queries or nearest neighbour queries of spatial objects. The significance of these access methods and how they take into account both clustering techniques and spatial indexing is described by Peter Van Oosterom [3]. In the absence of a spatial index, every object in the database needs to be checked if it meets the selection criteria. Clustering is required to group the objects that are often requested together. Or else, many different disk pages will have to be fetched, resulting in a very slow response. For spatial selection, clustering implies storing objects that are not only close in reality but also close in computer memory instead of being scattered all over the whole memory. In conventional database systems sorting the data is the basis for efficient searching. Higher dimensional data cannot be sorted in an obvious manner, as it is possible for text strings, numbers, or dates. Principally, computer memory is one-dimensional. However, spatial data is 2D, 3D or even higher and must be organized someway in the memory. An intuitive solution to organize the data is using a regular grid just as on a paper map. Each grid cell has a unique name e.g. ’A1’, ’C2’, or ’E5’. The cells are stored in some order in the memory and can each contain a fixed number of object references. In a grid cell, a reference is stored to an object whenever the object overlaps the cell. However, this will not be very efficient due to the irregular data distribution of spatial data because of which many cells will be empty while many others will be overfull. Therefore, more advanced techniques have been developed. 2.2 kd Trees A kd-tree or a k-dimensional tree is a space-partitioning data structure used for organizing points in a k-dimensional space. kd-trees are a useful for several applications such as searches involving a multidimensional search key like range searches and nearest neighbour searches. Kd-trees are a special case of Binary Space Partitioning (BSP) trees. A kd-tree only uses splitting planes that are perpendicular to one of the coordinate axes. This is different from BSP trees, in which arbitrary splitting planes can be used. In addition to this, every node of a kd-tree, from the root to the leaves, stores a point. Whereas in BSP trees, leaves are typically the only nodes that contain points. As a consequence, each splitting plane must go through one of the points in the kd-tree. [4] 2.2.1 Addition of elements to kd trees A new point is added to a kd tree in the same way as one adds an element to any other tree. At first, traverse the tree, starting from the root and moving to either the left or the right child depending on whether the point to be inserted is on the left or right side of the splitting plane. Once you get to a leaf node, add the new point as either the left or right child of the leaf node, again depending on which side of the node’s splitting plane contains the new point. 2.2.2 Deleting from kd trees Deletion is similar as in Binary Search Tree (BST) but slightly harder. Step1 find node to be deleted. Step2 two cases must be handled: (a) No children replace pointer to node by NULL (b) Has children replace node by minimum node in right subtree. If no right subtree exists then first move left subtree to become right subtree. [1] 2.3 Quad-trees Each node of a quad-tree is associated with a rectangular region of space. The top node is associated with the entire target space. Each non-leaf node divides its region into four equal sized quadrants, likewise, each such node has four child nodes corresponding to the four quadrants and so on. Leaf nodes have between zero and some fixed maximum number of points. 2.3.1 Simple definition of node structure of a point quad-tree qtnodetype = record INFO: infotype; XVAL: real; YVAL: real; NW, SW, NE, SE: *qtnodetype end Here, INFO is some additional information regarding that point . XVAL, YVAL are coordinates of that point. NW, SW, NE, SE are pointers to regions obtained by dividing given region. [1] 2.3.2 Common uses of Quad-trees Image Representation Spatial Indexing Efficient collision detection in two dimensions Storing sparse data, such as formatting information for a spreadsheet or for some matrix calculations. 2.3.3 Representing Image Using Quad-tree: [7] Let us suppose we divide the picture area into 4 sections. Those 4 sections are then further divided into 4 subsections. We continue this process, repeatedly dividing a square region by 4. We must impose a limit to the levels of division otherwise we could go on dividing the picture forever. Generally, this limit is imposed due to storage considerations or to limit processing time or due to the resolution of the output device. A pixel is the smallest subsection of the quad tree. To summarize, a square or quadrant in the picture is either : entirely one color composed of 4 smaller sub-squares To represent a picture using a quad tree, each leaf must represent a uniform area of the picture. If the picture is black and white, we only need one bit to represent the colour in each leaf; for example, 0 could mean black and 1 could mean white. Now consider the following image : The definition of a picture is a two dimensional array, where the elements of the array are colored points. Figure 2.3: First three levels of quad-tree Figure 2.4: Given Image This is how the above image could be stored in quad-tree. Figure 2.5: 88 pixel picture represented in a quad-tree Figure 2.6: The quad tree of the above example picture. The quadrants are shown in counterclockwise order from the top-right quadrant. The root is the top node. (The 2nd and 3rd quadrants are not shown.) 2.3.4 Advantages of Quad-trees: They can be manipulated and accessed much quicker than other models. Erasing an image takes only one step. All that is required is to set the root node to neutral. Zooming to a particular quadrant in the tree is also a one step operation. To reduce the complexity of the image, it suffices to remove the final level of nodes. Accessing particular regions of the image is a very fast operation. This is useful for updating certain regions of an image, perhaps for an environment with multiple windows. The main disadvantage is that it takes up a lot of space. 2.4 R-trees R-trees are N-dimensional extension of Binary trees, but are used for spatial access methods i.e., for indexing multi-dimensional information. They are supported in many modern database systems, along with variants like R+ -trees and R*-trees. The data structure splits space with hierarchically nested, and possibly overlapping, minimum bounding rectangles.[4] A rectangular bounding box is associated with each tree node. [5]   Bounding box of a leaf node is a minimum sized rectangle that contains all  the rectangles/polygons associated with the leaf node. Bounding box associated with a non-leaf node contains the bounding box associated with all its children. Bounding box of a node serves as its key in its parent node (if any) Bounding boxes of children of a node are allowed to overlap. 2.4.1 Structure of an R-tree node rtnodetype = record Rec1, .Reck : rectangle P1, .Pk : âˆâ€"rtnodetype end A polygon is stored in one node, and the bounding box of the node must contain the polygon. Since a polygon is stored only once, the storage efficiency of R-trees is better than that of k-d trees or quad-trees. The insertion and deletion algorithms use the bounding boxes from the nodes to ensure that close by elements are placed in the same leaf node. Each entry within a leaf node stores two-pieces of information; a way of identifying the actual data element and the bounding box of the data element. 2.4.2 Inserting a node 1. Find a leaf to store it, and add it to the leaf. To find leaf, follow a child (if any) whose bounding box contains bounding box of data item, else child whose overlap with data item bounding box is maximum 2. Handle overflows by splits. We may need to divide entries of an overfull node into two sets such that the bounding boxes have minimum total area. 2.4.3 Deleting a node 1. Find the leaf and delete object; determine new MBR. 2. If the node is too empty: Delete the node recursively at its parent Insert all entries of the deleted node into the R-tree 2.4.4 Searching R-trees Similarly, for searching algorithms, bounding boxes are used to decide whether or not to search inside a child node. Here we need to find minimal bounding rectangle. In this way, most of the nodes in the tree are never touched during a search. If the node is a leaf node, output the data items whose keys intersect the given query point/region Else, for each child of the current node whose bounding box overlaps the query point/region, recursively search the child. 2.5 Comparison of Different Data Structures [1] k-d trees are very easy to implement. However, in general a k-d tree consisting k nodes may have a height k causing complexity of both insertion and search in k-d trees to be high. In practice, path lengths (root to leaf) in k-d trees tend to be longer than those in point quad-trees because these trees are binary. R-trees have a large number of rectangles potentially stored in each node. They are appropriate for disk access by reducing the height of the tree, thus leading to fewer disk access. The disadvantage of R-trees is that the bounding rectangle associated with different nodes may overlap. Thus when searching an R-tree, instead of following one path (as in case of quad-tree), we might follow multiple path down the tree. This difference grows even more acute when range search and neighbour searches are considered. In case of point quad-trees, while performing search/insertion each case requires comparisons on two coordinates. Deletion in point quad-trees is difficult because finding a candidate replacement node for the node being deleted is not easy. Chapter III Metadata Metadata is data about data. Any data that is used to describe the content, condition, quality and other aspects of data for humans or machines to locate, access and understand the data is known as Metadata. Metadata helps the users to get an overview of the data. 3.1 Need of Metadata The main functions of metadata can be listed as follows: [8] Description To describe and identify data sources. These descriptions help create catalogs, index, etc., thereby improving access to them. Querying Formulation of queries. Administration To provide information to help manage and administrate a data source, such as when and how it was created, and who can legally access it. Preservation To facilitate data archival and preservation like data refreshing and migration, etc. Technical To indicate how a system functions or metadata behaves, such as data formats, compression ratios, scaling routines, encryption key, and security, etc. Use To indicate the level and type of use of data sources like multiversion, user tracking, etc. 3.2 Metadata in the Life Cycle of Multimedia Objects A multimedia object undergoes a life cycle consisting of production, organization, searching, utilization, preservation, and disposition. Metadata passes through similar stages as an integral part of these multimedia objects [8]: Creation Objects of different media types are created often generating data of how they were produced (e.g., the EXIF files produced by digital cameras) and stored in an information retrieval system. Associated metadata is generated accordingly for administrating and describing the objects. Organization Multimedia objects may be composed of several components. Metadata is created to specify how these compound objects are put together. Searching and retrieval Created and stored multimedia objects are subject to search and retrieval by users. Metadata provides aids through catalog and index to enable efficient query formulation and resource localization. Utilization Retrieved multimedia objects can be further utilized, reproduced, and modified. Metadata related to digital rights management and version control, etc. may be created. Preservation and disposition Multimedia objects may undergo modification, refreshing, and migration to ensure their availability. Objects that are out-of-date or corrupted may be discarded. Such preservation and disposition activities can be documented by the associated metadata. 3.3 Classification of Metadata Metadata directly affects the way in which objects of different media types are used. Classifying metadata can facilitate the handling of different media types in a multimedia information retrieval system. Based on its (in)dependence on media contents, metadata can be classified into two kinds, namely content independent and content-dependent metadata [8]: Content-independent metadata provides information which is derived independently from the content of the original data. Examples of content independent metadata are date of creation and location of a text document, type-of-camera used to record a video fragment, and so on. These metadata are called descriptive data. Content-dependent metadata depends on the content of the original data. A special case of content-dependent metadata is content-dependent descriptive metadata , which cannot be extracted automatically from the content but is created manually: annotation is a well-known example. In contrast, content-dependent non-descriptive metadata is based directly on the contents of data. 3.4 Image metadata Some of the image files containing metadata include Exchangeable image file format (EXIF) and Tagged Image File Format (TIFF). Having metadata about images embedded in TIFF or EXIF files is one way of acquiring additional data about an image. Image metadata are attained through tags. Tagging pictures with subjects, related emotions, and other descriptive phrases helps Internet users find pictures easily rather than having to search through entire image collections. A prime example of an image tagging service is Flickr, where users upload images and then describe the contents. Other patrons of the site can then search for those tags. Flickr uses a folksonomy: a free-text keyword system in which the community defines the vocabulary through use rather than through a controlled vocabulary. Digital photography is increasingly making use of metadata tags. Photographers shooting Camera RAW file formats can use applications such as Adobe Bridge or Apple Computers Aperture to work with camera metadata for post-processing. Users can also tag photos for organization purposes using Adobes Extensible Metadata Platform (XMP) language, for example. [4] 3.5 Document metadata Most programs that create documents, including Microsoft PowerPoint, Microsoft Word and other Microsoft Office products, save metadata with the document files. These metadata can contain the name of the person who created the file, the name of the person who last edited the file, how many times the file has been printed, and even how many revisions have been made on the file. Other saved material, such as document comments are also referred to as metadata. Document Metadata is particularly important in legal environments where litigation can request this sensitive information which can include many elements of private detrimental data. This data has been linked to multiple lawsuits that have got corporations into legal complications. [4] 3.6 Digital library metadata There are three variants of metadata that are commonly used to describe objects in a digital library: descriptive Information describing the intellectual content of the object, such as cataloguing records, finding aids or similar schemes. It is typically used for bibliographic purposes and for search and retrieval. structural Information that ties each object to others to make up logical units e.g., information that relates individual images of pages from a book to the others that make up the book. administrative Information used to manage the object or control access to it. This may include information on how it was scanned, its storage format, copyright and licensing information, and information necessary for the long-term preservation of the digital objects. [4] Chapter IV Text Databases Basic text comprises of alphanumeric characters. Optical character recognition (OCR) practices are deployed to translate analog text to digital text. The most common digital representation of characters is the ASCII code. For this, seven bits are required (eight bits might be used, where in the eighth bit is reserved for a special purpose) for each character. Storage space for a text document that is required is equivalent to the number of characters. For instance, a 15 page text document consisting of about 4000 characters generally consumes 60 kilobytes. Now days, structured text documents have become extremely popular. They comprise titles, chapters, sections, paragraphs, and so forth. A title can be presented to the user in a different format than a paragraph or a sentence. Different standards are used to encode structured information such as HTML and XML (hyper text markup language and extensible markup language) There are different approaches like Huffman and Arithmetic Coding, which can be used for text compression, but as the storage requirements are not too high, these approaches are not as important for text as they are for multimedia data. [10] 4.1 Text Documents A text document consists of identification and is considered to be a list of words. Likewise, a book is considered to be a document, and so is a paper in the events of a conference or a Web page. The key identification used for a book may be an ISBN number or the title of the paper together with the ISBN number of the conference event or a URL for a Web page. Retrieval of text documents does not normally entail the presentation of the entire document, as it consumes a large amount of space as well as time. Instead, the system presents the identifications of the chosen documents mainly along with a brief description and/or rankings of the document. 4.2 Indexing Indexing refers to the derivation of metadata from their documents and storage in an index. In a way, the index describes the content of the documents. The content can be described by terms like social or political for text documents. Also, the system utilizes the index to determine the output during retrieval. The index can be filled up in two ways, manually as well as automatically. Assigned terms can be added to documents as a kind of annotation by professional users such as librarians. These terms can be selected often from a prescribed set of terms, the catalog. A catalog describes a certain scientific field and is composed by specialists. One of the main advantages of this technique is that the professional users are aware of the acceptable terms that can be used in query formulation. A major drawback of this technique is the amount of work that has to be performed for the manual indexing process. Document content description can also be facilitated automatically resulting in what are termed as derived terms. One of the many steps required for this can be a step in which words in English text are identified by an algorithm and then put to lower case. Basic tools are used in other steps such as stop word removal and stemming. Stop words are words in the document which have a little meaning and most of the times include words like the and it. These stop words are erased from the document. Words are conflated to their stem in the document through stemming. As an example, the stemmer can conflate the words computer, compute and computation to the stem comput. 4.3 Query Formulation Query formulation refers to the method of representing the information need. The resultant formal representation of information is the query. In a wider perspective, query formulation denotes the comprehensive interactive dialogue between the system and the user, leading to both a suitable query and also a better understanding by the user of the information need. It also denotes the query formulation when there are no previously retrieved documents to direct the search, thus, the formulation of the preliminary query. It is essential to differentiate between the expert searcher and the relaxed end user. The expert searcher is aware of the document collection and the assigned terms. He/ she will use Boolean operators to create the query and will be able to adequately rephrase the same as per the output of the system. In case the result is too small, the expert searcher must expand the query, and in case if the result is too large, he/she must be able to make the query more restrictive. The communication of the need for information to the system in natural language interests the end user. Such a statement of the need for information is termed as a request. Automatic query formulation comprises of receiving the request and generating a preliminary query by the application of algorithms that were also used for the derivation of terms. In general, the query consists of a list of query terms. This list is accepted by the system and it composes a result set. The system can formulate a successive query based on this relevant feedback. 4.4 Matching The matching algorithm is mainly the most important part of an information retrieval system. This algorithm makes a comparison of the query against the document representations in the index. In the exact matching algorithm, a Boolean query, which is formulated by an expert searcher, defines precisely the set of documents that satisfy the query. The system generates a yes or a no decision for each document. In the case of an inexact matching algorithm, the system delivers a ranked list of documents. Users can traverse this document list to search for the information they need. Ranked retrieval puts the documents that are relevant in the top of the ranked list, thus, saving the time the user has to invest on reading those documents. Simple but effective ranking algorithms make use of the frequency allocation of terms over documents. Ranking algorithms that are based on statistical approaches, halve the time the user has to spend on reading those documents. Chapter V Image Databases Digital images can be defined as an electronic snapshot scanned from documents or taken of a scene, for example printed texts, photographs, manuscripts, and various artworks. Digital image is modeled and mapped as a grid of dots, pixels or commonly known picture elements. A tonal value is allocated to each of these pixels, which can be black, white, and shades of gray or color. Pixel itself is symbolized in binary code of zeros and ones. Computer stores these binary digits or bits corresponding to each pixel in a sequence and are later reduced to mathematical representation by compressing them. After compression these bits are interpreted and read to generate an analog output by the computer for display or printing purposes. Figure 5.1: As shown in this bitonal image, each pixel is assigned a tonal value, in this example 0 for black and 1 for white. To further describe the grayscale of a pixel one needs to say that one byte is of eight bits. For a color pixel one needs three colors of one bye each, these colors are red, green and blue. So, for a rectangular screen one can compute the amount of data required for the image using the formula: A = xyb Where A is the number of bytes needed, x is the number of pixels per horizontal line, y is the number of horizontal lines, and b is the number of bytes per pixel. Using this formulae for a screen with value of x being 800, y being 600, and for b being 3; A=xyb thus A = 1.44 Mbyte. Compression is required for this significant amount of data. Image compression is based on exploiting redundancy in images and properties of the human perception. Pixels in specific areas appear to be similar; this concept of similarity is called Spatial Redundancy. Human’s views of images are tolerant r

country status :: essays research papers

stThe Status of your Country as of 02/07/2002 Country Name   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  dsgsg (#6647)   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Government   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Tyranny Turns Left Turns Taken Turns Stored Rank NetWorth  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  0 1202 0 10,524 $42,943  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Money Food Oil Population Land Per Capita Income  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  $898 1352 bushels 11,142 barrels 1586 287 Acres $5.71  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Tax Rate Taxes Expenses Food Production Food Consumption  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  70% $6340 $2299 70 bushels 36 bushels Expense Breakdown   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Military Alliances Land  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  $884 $170 $1245 Land Distribution   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Military Forces   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Technology Ratings   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Enterprise Zones Residences Industrial Complexes Military Bases Research Labs Farms Oil Rigs Construction Sites Unused Lands   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  18 8 84 0 0 0 5 0 172   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Spies Troops Jets Turrets Tanks Nuclear Missiles Chemical Missiles Cruise Missiles   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  33 181 0 0 1683 0 0 0   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Military Medical Business Residential Agricultural Warfare Military Strategy Weapons Industrial Spy SDI   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  0 1971 6 1320 36 7706 0 0 0 30 0 Plague spreads throughout your lands! Kuszcotopia (4166) Instumentality of Ma (12842) dsgsg (6647) bibibibibibibii (8546) Communist Russia (3733) Greetings. I am General Ruby, leader of the Emerald army. It seems our two nations are locked in battle, I have a proposal that may interest you. This war we are engaged in does seem like a pointless one. I believe that in the end, both countries will lose more than won but only one will survive and I sware by the sword of Amethyst, I shall be the victor. So my proposal is we call a truse immidiatly, if this happens, I shall call off my allies and you shall do the same, however you will pay me 10% of your net profit and my ally assissting in this battle shall recieve 5%. If you do not agree to these terms and are persistant in your attacks, then I shall call in more allies, who are greater in number and much more powerfull then I and you. I shall defeat you at all costs, I swear by the sword of Amethyst. Yours sincerely, General Ruby - Leader of the Emerald Army

Should the Electoral College Be Abolished

Francisco Colin 4th Period There have been many talks about the Electoral College and how it should or should not be abolished when election time comes around. Many people feel that the electoral college is unfair because it seems that even if we vote it only comes down to the electoral college to see if they won presidency or re-election. Personally, I feel that the Electoral College should be abolished nationwide, so that way our voice can be â€Å"heard† or used more within the government.It should also be abolished because of the fact how in most of the elections, the Presidents are most and only elected because of the electoral college and our own vote, the vote that we had taken our own time to choose our future leader that will guide the country in the right path. Instead, the states choose who to vote just because the majority of the Electoral College is just one of the parties that dominate that state and not the other.For example, since the state of Texas is Republic an dominated, what if the people had voted for the democratic side and the democratic won by the popular votes in the state of Texas, then it wouldn’t matter just because of how the state chooses who to vote because of the majority of the party in Texas. This to me is very outrageous because of how our forefathers from the past had fought for our right to vote, it is being put to waste since it only goes by the Electoral College and not our votes.For example, when Al Gore ran for his presidency the first time, we had the people, even though I wasn’t the age to vote at the moment, had chosen Al Gore to run this fine country of ours, even though the popular vote came close. He was the clear winner that the people had chosen to lead this country, but instead was cheated out of being President because of how George W.Bush had won the Electoral College by a small margin; he was instead elected to be the President to lead our nation. Because of this also, if feel that it is actually time for the Electoral College to be abolished out of the election system, because as us Americans voting, in doesn’t really matter who we chose to win because of how our won states decide with the electoral college who to win Presidency, which isn’t very fair for our nation.

Different approaches to the Study of Psychology

This paper discusses different approaches to the study of psychology and shows their relevance to the understanding of offending behaviour. A generally acceptable definition of psychology is that it is the science of the behaviour of living organisms with an emphasis upon human beings. With roots in the Greek psyche (life or self) and logos (logic), psychology is the scientific study of observable behaviour that we can observe directly or measure with instruments (Baucum, 1999).Therefore, in general, psychology means the study of behaviour, and it follows that if we learn to understand the way people SHOULD behave by a methodical, logical study, by the same manner we should gain some insight and understanding into why some deviants behave the way that they do.Cognitive psychology is one of the major approaches within psychology and can be contrasted with the behavioral view (a focus on observable behavior), a psychoanalytic view (a focus on the unconscious), a humanistic view (a focu s on personal growth and interpersonal relationships) and a social cognitive view (a focus on the social environment as it impacts personal qualities such as thinking and feeling. ) An important distinction between the behavioral and cognitive or humanistic views is the importance of feedback.For behaviorists, the most important feedback comes in the form of the application of consequences from the environment. The cognitive, as well humanistic, would focus on the importance of internal feedback. The social cognitive view considers both types. (Huitt, 2006) Of course the term offending behaviour does not relate just to criminal activities but to any type of behaviour which can be seen as deviant. There is no doubt that the use of psychology can be very useful and effective in criminology, one of the most obvious examples of offending behaviour.If this work is not done correctly, however, the effect can be frustrating and can slow down the entire procedure. It is therefore very impor tant to do this kind of work systematically and effectively (Victoroff, 2005) According to David Lester in his book entitled â€Å"Theories of Personality† (1995), there are three major approaches to the explanation of human behaviour. He lists these as intrapsychic explanations, physiological theories and simple learning theories. He explains intrapsychic explanations in the following manner: They are explanations that use concepts based upon psychological processes and structures within the mind.These processes may focus on the contents of the mind such as particular desires, emotions or thoughts (Lester, 1995). Loosely, psychologists employing this method to understand, perhaps, why pedophiles act in the way that they do, or what would cause a man to want to rape. It may also lead to the understanding of self image, and what would cause, for example, a person with a low self image (in his mind the fault of his mother) to want to take revenge upon all women. It typically de fines and utilizes more complicated mechanisms such as defense mechanisms, complexes and system principles (Lester, 1995)The second method listed by Lester also focuses on the individual but as opposed to using mental processes to explain human behaviour, it relies upon the physiology of the brain. This is the Physiological theories approach – William Sheldon and Hans Eysneck have proposed classic physiological theories of personality – and recent advances in biological psychiatry look as if they may form the basis for modern, improved physiological theories of personality (Lester, 1995).One can see that this type of approach may be very useful in the study of a variety of neurological disorders, including perhaps schizophrenia – it may allow heightened understanding of why the patient has split personalities – or Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, or even disorders which fall into the depression category such as Bipolar Disorder. The third approac h given by Lister focuses upon the environment (or the situation) of the individual as the source of explanations for human behavior.Social Learning Theory takes into account the fact that humans are more complex than lower animals, and introduces a limited number of intrapsychic processes (mainly cognitive elements) in order to provide a more complete understanding of the behaviour of human beings. (Lister, 1995). There definitely seems to be truth in this. Take for example a woman who is ordinarily of a sunny disposition. Her friends may notice that for a few months she has been moody, lethargic, withdrawn, and generally not interested in anything.This is probably indicative of something being wrong, and further exploration may reveal to the friends that the reason for this offending behaviour is that she is under severe financial stress, for example. Lister also says that while all of the above pose a variety of answers to the understanding of human behaviour, the truest is proba bly a combination of all of the above (Lister, 1995). Take the example of a well known person who is known to have exhibited offending behaviour – Robert Thompson, who as a 10 yr old participated with Jon Venables in the killing of 3 yr old Jamie Bulger.All of the approaches described above can be used in the analysis of the following information. Born of an abusive father and an alcoholic mother, he had five older brothers who assaulted him. His father left the family after viciously assaulting his mother. Reminiscent of William Golding’s novel The Lord of the Flies, the older brothers bullied the younger into submission. Robert did try to be a good son and would help his mother in the kitchen and babysitting the younger ones, trying to provide support.Robert was not aggressive as much as sly. He skipped school, but when he did attend he was not considered a troublemaker. Teachers thought he was shy and quiet, yet manipulative of others, and didn’t expect much from him. Other kids avoided him. (Courtroom Television Network, 2005) Sometimes he talked tough, trying to act the role of a Thompson, but he was not considered violent or aggressive. He roamed the streets of Walton at 1 a. m. His mother Ann sometimes hid his shoes to keep him home.Unfortunately, Robert’s abuse at the hands of his older brothers began to repeat in his treatment of his younger brother. He intimidated his younger brother, but they shared a strange bond. At night, they would lie in bed together, sucking one another’s thumb. (During the course of Robert’s trial Ryan began exhibiting disturbing behavior. He wet his bed regularly, set fires in his room, and gained weight. He seemed jealous of the attention Robert received and his mother was fearful that he would do something equally horrible to get the same treatment.)Using the approaches listed above we can begin to understand the mind of Robert Bulger, and use this information to prevent further li ke crimes from occurring. This paper has discussed different approaches to the study of psychology and shown their relevance to the understanding of offending behaviour. We can see that using a combination of the different approaches to psychology is probably the best way to get at the truth.