Literature evaluation of a journal article Assignment - 3

Literature evaluation of a journal article - Assignment Example The criteria were assessed by rating procedures. In the following step, the relative significance of the criteria was established by the AHP. The suitability of land is simply established using the additive weighting procedure. The landfill suitability was classified into four main areas (Nadali 99). The rest of the area was concluded to be inappropriate for landfill. The results of the research demonstrated that it is a supplementary and necessary stride to establish the best candidate were chosen from the lands that have the best suitability. The paper was comprehensively researched by using data collected from the ground. From the research findings it is clear that the high population growth has resulted increased demand for landfills (Nadali 99). The study employed the AHP and ArcGIS and this increases the validity of the results. The authors found that the most significant criteria in this region were surface water and sensitive ecosystems. The paper concluded that dumping is one of the major issues facing municipalities in Iran. The conclusions of the study state that is tough to find land that is suitable for landfills (Nadali 104). In order to take regulations and all factors into consideration we employ AHP and GIS to deal with this complex issue. I agree with the conclusions and the paper contributes positively to my knowledge in landfills. The major limitations of the study is the limited data, comprehensive inspections are needed to involve members of the public in the landfill selection procedure and to study unavailable inadequate digital information including ground water. Nadali Alavi, Gholamreza Goudarzi, Ali Akbar Babaei, Nemat Jaafarzadeh and Mohsen Hosseinzadeh. Municipal Solid Waste Landfill Site Selection with Geographic Information Systems and analytical hierarchy process: A case study in Mahshahr County, Iran. Waste Management Resources.

Adn vs. Bsn Essay Example for Free

Adn vs. Bsn Essay The nursing profession continues to argue whether a nurse who holds a BSN is desirable to the Associates-Degree-prepared nurse. This has been a topic of debate since 1965, when the American Nurses Association published an opinion paper advocating for the baccalaureate degree to be the minimal standard for entry-level nurses. While some say that the level of education isn’t relevant once you orient a nurse to a certain setting, others disagree and assert that the baccalaureate degree prepared nurses demonstrate higher levels of skill in communication, delegation, assessment, teaching and supervision. Most agree, however, that each degree program provides a different level of preparation and competencies for the graduating nurse. The focus of ADN programs has been to prepare the nurse with considerable clinical experience and technical nursing skills needed to provide patient care at the bedside, while the BSN program concentrates on evidence-based practice, research, leadership skills and communication. An additional difference is the target client. Associate-degree graduates are prepared to meet the needs of the patient. The baccalaureate graduate’s scope is widened to include the family and interdisciplinary groups. According to a study done in 1988 by the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, nursing competencies across the spectrum of nursing education, â€Å"varied in complexity, depth, and breadth. †(Poster, 2006) Entry-level competencies were evaluated on three categories: provider of care, coordinator of care, and member of a profession. There was virtually no difference noted in the provider of care category other than the use of an evidence-based analytical approach by the baccalaureate-prepared nurse, as opposed to a critical thinking approach to decision making by the associate-degree-prepared nurse. In the category of coordinator of care, the major contrast was between how the advanced-degree-prepared the nurse to act as more of a facilitator of care between multiple factions of the healthcare team. As a member of a profession, the BSN nurse acted as a leader rather than in the participant role of the ADN nurse. Where the major differences occurred was in the â€Å"knowledge required for achievement of competency. †(Poster, 2006) The diploma prepared nurse bases her plan of care on the nursing diagnosis. The advanced-degree nurse’s basis for developing the plan of care uses â€Å"evidence-based and theoretical analysis of available data. †(Poster, 2006) An example of this difference might be in the care of patient who has a chronic condition, such as congestive heart failure. This patient undoubtedly is seen multiple times in the course of a year for symptoms pertaining to his health condition. Nurse A, with the associate’s degree, does a good job of taking care of the patient. She sees to it that he gets all of his medications in a timely fashion, and that he completes all of his scheduled tests; that his basic needs are met. Her plan of care would include all of the interventions to reflect such care. She would weigh him daily, make sure his meals followed the proper diet, and etc. Nurse B, with the BSN, also provides the afore-mentioned care. However, in addition, she may look at why this patient has frequently been admitted to her floor. She would perhaps investigate whether the same symptoms precipitated his decline and question the patient as to whether he is weighing himself daily, what types of food he is eating at home, and whether he has been taking his medications on a routine basis. She might find that he doesn’t have a scale at home, does not have access to his medications all of the time, or is simply non-compliant. Her plan of care may include a social worker and case management are more involved in his discharge planning to insure that the patient has the equipment and resources required to manage is illness at home. Nurse B might also collaborate with the patient to develop a plan he can agree to follow and provide a list of community resources that are available. Both Nurse A and Nurse B have seen to it that the patient got what he needed during his hospital visit. The healthcare industry is changing rapidly. The life expectancy of the average patient has extended due to the increase in technological advances and life-saving measures and requires that professional nurses have the ability to mange these complex patients. The baccalaureate-degree program provides an opportunity to build on the communication, problem-solving and decision-making skills taught in the ADN program to facilitate better patient care. Whether it be a an associate-degree-prepared nurse or one holding an advanced degree, one thing I am sure we can all agree upon is that better educated nurses will better serve the profession as a whole.

Making the World a Better Place with My Communications Degree Essay

Various people throughout my educational pursuit have asked me, â€Å"What can you do with a degree in Communications?† My answer is, I can do many things but mostly I want to deliver messages in order to help others. I am a networker by nature and I want to use that skill in order to help initiate positive change. In order to capitalize on my innate persuasive talents, I feel I must strive to speak to people and not at people. Anyone can talk but a true communicator can extract information and talent from others and shed a positive light on an issue or a cause. I want to be that communicator. The historical progress of communication has gone from face-to-face grunts, groans and body language, to cave paintings, to print media and now to social media whereby you can reach virtually anyone in the world. What has not changed are key points, first you must get the other party to hear your message, secondly the message must be received and interpreted and there must be a form of feedback and participation for the message to be successful. I remember my first State College Communication epiphany was realizing that to be a good communicator, you must be a good listener. Communication, particularly in the social media age is a continuous loop of realization that the sender of a message is simultaneously a receiver of message. Without this sender/receiver loop, a person is not communicating with another. When I think of communication, I look to Maslow’s hierarchy of Needs for answers. Abraham Maslow developed a model presenting human needs; starting with the most basic an d advancing to those that motivate and foster personal development. The stages are biological and physical, Safety, Belonging and love, Esteem, and lastly Self-actualizat... ...tions and 9) Interaction posture-otherwise known as the ability to respond to others in a descriptive, nonevaluative and nonjudgmental manner (Lustig & Koester, 2010). Armed with the tools I obtained at State College, I am ready to go out into this complex and exciting world to be a vessel for social change and economic development. I will assist start-up companies as well as small companies that are struggling to enter social media promotion. As a former non-profit director and volunteer, I will extend my volunteer work to include cultural competencies and strategies to promote health, prosperity and cultural tolerance. Works Cited Miller, K. (2012). Organizational communication; approaches and processes. (Sixth Ed.). Boston Lustig, M. & Koester, J. (2010). Intercultural competence: Interpersonal communication across cultures. (Sixth Ed.) Boston

India and Different Religions

Unity in Diversity in India India is probable the only country in the world where people belonging to different religions, castes and creeds, speaking different languages, having different cultures, different modes of living, different clothing, different feeding habits, worshiping different gods and deity live together in harmony and believe to be the children of one mother-MOTHER INDIA. They are one nation at large. They are governed by one central authority, have one Prime Minister, one president, one Supreme Court and one army chief. This is why we say we have unity in diversity.Geographically India is a vast country so much so that even one of its states in bigger than many countries of Europe. But the whole country is well bounded by nature. In the north is the Himalayan Range. On the other side is the Indian Ocean, the Bay of Bengal and the Arabian sea. This provides, natural geographical unity to INDIA we have different religions in India. Apart from Hinduism we have the foll owers of Buddhism, Jainism, Islam, Sikhism, Christianity and Parsees. But Hindus form the greater majority. There are, no doubt, different factions, sections and sub-section but basically we all believe in the theory of Dharma and Karma.The theory of rebirth, purification of soul, salvation, Heaven and Hell holds good for each and every one. We untidily celebrate the festivals like Holy, Diwali, Charismas, Budh Jayanthi and Mahavir Jayanthi. This provides unity in diversity. India philosophy has developed on India soil. It has not been borrowed from anywhere. This has blended the various cultures together. There are differences in overall conception of gods, and modes of worship. These changes have been gradual due to interaction of different groups. But the ultimate aim of achieving salvation and the fear of Hell keeps them all bound together.Very important characteristic of Indian society is the coexistence of different ethnic groups. These groups formulated inter-group behavior. Hence there is no mutual interference as also no merging of their identity. There might be some drawback in our constitution such as separate provision for different castes; particularly the backward and scheduled castes and scheduled tribes but industrialization policy and agrarian reforms have generated a new secular outlook giving rise to a new culture. Members of different castes and communities and followers of different religions have come together in forms, factories and educational institution.As a result different cultures have been blended together thereby bringing unity among them. We have a cultural unity in India in as much as our philosophy of life, our customs, creeds and traditions are basically, more or less, the same. The institution of marriage, the very foundation of a society, exists all over the country and most of the rituals and sanskars are similar everywhere. Emotional unity plays its own part. The name of Bharat Mata brings us closer and closer together. I n spite of different languages and dialects, Sanskrit, the language of Vedas, brings us all together because Sanskrit is the mother of all languages.The outstanding features of Indian culture responsible for bringing unity in diversity may be summarized as follows: (a) We Indians lay emphasis on spirituality, not on material wealth. (b) Religion has the most important place in India. We believe in Karma and Sanskar. Performance of duty is our religion. (c) Religion tolerance is the unique feature of religions in India. Hence there is no difficulty in coexistence of follower of different religion. (d) Hinduism, which forms majority of the population, has the capacity to absorb all good cultures. It has either absorbed the immigrant cultures or has largely influenced them. e) We have a very broad outlook. We preach and follow religion and spiritualism without ignoring married life and worldly things. (f) We firmly believe in freedom of thought and freedom of expression because such fr eedom enriches the culture which then becomes dynamic. Although unity to the desired extent has not been attained but all attempts by foreign agencies to disrupt it or disprove it have proved futile. We might be subject to regionalism and casteism in trifling matters but we always rise to the occasion in times of need such as foreign interference or invasion on our territory. This is sufficient to prove our unity in diversity.

“How to Tell a True War Story,” by Tim O’Brien Essay

In the essay, â€Å"How to Tell a True War Story,† Tim O’Brien tells several stories of war to illustrate to his readers the criteria for truth in storytelling. O’Brien offers his readers a guide to telling and determining war stories that are true, for the author, true does not necessarily mean actual or real. Instead, O’Brien tells us what a true war story is, but his requirements are not always clear precise—a true war story â€Å"never seems to end,† (O’Brien 273) â€Å"embarrasses you,† (270) â€Å"are contradictory,† (275) and have an â€Å"uncompromising allegiance to obscenity and evil† (270)—they are defined and given context by the author through the telling of his own accounts. The essayist Jon Krakauer offers up his own version of a war story, of sorts, in his telling of the story of Chris McCandless, a young man not participating in a war of nations, or a conflict with others; he, in his own wor ds, was involved in â€Å"the climactic battle to kill the false being within and victoriously conclude the spiritual pilgrimage† (Krakauer 207). The battlefield for McCandless was not a booby-trapped jungle, saturated with enemies and soldiers for the opposition; no, McCandless’s battlefield was the Alaskan frontier. Like a soldier going to war, McCandless knew that where he was going was dangerous. Krakauer remarks that â€Å"he was fully aware when he entered the bush that he had given himself aperilously (emphasis added) slim margin for error. He knew precisely what was at stake† (Krakauer 219). One can draw many parallels between the essays, or war stories, of Krakauer and O’Brien; they are both provocative, and both use descriptive language and paint vivid pictures in the minds of their reader, they both write of young men in the midst of a conflict—emotional or physical—but the stories differ as well. O’Brien presents his ideas of what makes a true war story; based on these ideas, we can determine that the war story told by Krakauer is not a true war story because it is committe d to morality. There are no lessons in true war stories (O’Brien 269); Krakauer offered a lesson in youth and growth in his story about Christopher McCandless. O’Brien and Krakauer are similar in that they both place importance on relaying to the reader the fact that youth and war go hand in hand. It is mainly the young who serve on the frontlines in battle and who are willing to accept the risks associated with war, and it is also the young who become victims of their own inexperience and succumb to the perils  war—being involved in war does not equate to readiness for war. For instance, O’Brien tells a true war story of two young men, soldiers in the Vietnam; he writes, â€Å"They were kids; they just didn’t know. A nature hike, they thought, not even a war †¦ they were giggling and calling each other yellow mother and playing a silly game they invented† (O’Brien 270). Here, O’Brien sets up his readers with words reminiscent of childh ood, the soldiers could have just as well been two kids at summer camp or in a school yard, or any place where kids play, laugh, and call each other names. O’Brien then takes that childhood scene and infuses it with the brutality of war. He describes how one of the young soldiers who, while playing and laughing, detonated a landmine and was killed. True war stories show the gruesomeness of war—kids die horrific deaths, and life is lost in the blink of an eye. War forces â€Å"kids† to grow up quickly, and not on their own terms. Goofing, giggling, and silliness have no place in war; death is a consequence of playfulness, and youth must quickly give way to maturity. In a true war story, a young man may never have the opportunity to figure out life for himself, war does not afford him the opportunity to come to appropriate conclusions about what is right, wrong, moral, or immoral; he will either die, or he will be so exposed to the death of his friends that his moral compass will be disrupted, and he will engage unconscionable behavior. Krakauer presents a similar of theme of youth in the face of danger. Like O’Brien, Krakauer uses words that construct a rich mental image for the reader; in this case, the image is that of an overly eager child. Krakauer writes, â€Å"The boy could hardly contain his excitement. He was about to be alone in the vast Alaska wilds† (Krakauer 206). Krakauer refers to his subject, Chris McCandless, as â€Å"the boy,† conveying the inexperience and ineptitude and childlike enthusiasm of McCandless who, because of his bubbling excitement, sounds more like a kid in a candy store or a child on Christmas morning, than he does a like man about to confront the isolation and bitter cold of the wilderness. Later on, that excitement would turn to desperation and eventually death—like the soldier in O’Brien’s story, the boy meets an early end to his life. In spite of this similarity, Krakauer does not tell a true war story. For some young warriors, adulthood is thrust upon them, maturity it is meted out with no opportunity fo r choice or deliberation; there is no rite of passage. This is not so for McCandless;  Krakauer recognizes growth and maturity arising in McCandless, noting that he made the decision to postpone the river crossing â€Å"after weighing his options,† then â€Å"settl[ing] on the most prudent course† (Krakauer 212). Learning to tame impetuousness allows one to make moral choices, choices that show respect for oneself and one’s surroundings. This type of learning happens with contemplation, introspection, and time. It is not a true war story; not because Krakauer authored a majestic death for McCandless, but because it seemed McCandless lost his war, and it appeared that the battle was too much for him in the end; because Krakauer wrote of a young man who was able to mature during his war, and was able to learn lessons of humility, morality, and caution during his time alone in the Alaska wilds. Imagery in a war stories can be graphic, but in a true war story there is no redemptive value in the gratuitousness of violent acts. O’Brien writes about Rat Riley’s who after witnessing the death of his best friend, encounters a baby buffalo in an abandoned village, â€Å"He opened up a can of C rations, pork and beans, but the baby buffalo wasn’t interested. Rat shrugged. He stepped back and shot it through the right front knee. It went down hard, then got up again, and Rat took careful aim and shot off an ear. He shot it in the hind quarters and in the little hump at its back. He shot it twice in the flanks. It wasn’t to kill; it was to hurt. He put the rifle muzzle up against the mouth and shot the mouth away†¦. There wasn’t a great deal of pity of the baby water buffalo† (O’Brien 274).† O’Brien uses the graphic details to give his reader a glimpse into the mind of soldier who has lost his innocence, one who has l ost empathy because of the grotesque things he has witnessed. The killing of the baby buffalo was not only a response to the pain (or numbness) felt by Rat, but was also a response to rejection. War makes people to terrible things, things that they may not do otherwise. In a true war story, there is little or no remorse for the terrible act. For a soldier, terrible acts and normal acts may become indistinguishable after a while. Death, killing, and suffering is an expectation in war, in a true war story, virtue does not exist; therefore, remorse and empathy cannot exist either. O’Brien clearly illustrates this idea, when writing about the buffalo. Krakauer also uses graphic imagery to show the grisly reality of war. Krakauer tells a story about a moose shot by  McCandless, â€Å"He butchered the carcass under a thick cloud of flies and mosquitoes, boiled the organs into a stew, and then laboriously excavated a burrow in the face of the rocky stream bank directly below the bus, in which he tried to cure, by smoking, the immense slabs o f purple flesh (Krakauer 209).† The shock and gore of cutting up a dead animal with insects biting and flying about could lend itself well to a true war story, but here, it does not. What differentiates this story from O’Brien’s is that Krakauer writes that McCandless felt â€Å"remorse soon after he shot the moose† (Krakauer 209). Because of this remorse, this is not a true war story. If this were a true war story as identified by O’Brien, there would be no sympathy for the animal, no moral outrage by the killer that every part of the animal could not be used. A true war story would not show the level of respect for life, for human and animal value; a true war story disregards life. O’Brien writes that when the buffalo torture was over, it was simply thrown in a well with no regard for the animal, an act that not only punished the animal, but demonstrated a lack of respect for human life as the drinking water from that well would be contaminated. Conversely, Krakauer emphasizes t he great measures McCandless took to preserve the moose meat, and the moral dilemma McCandless faced because he was not successful. O’Brien leaves little room for a story that has any moral significance to be considered a true war story. The author contends that â€Å"If at the end of a war story you feel uplifted, or if you feel that some small bit of rectitude has been salvaged from the larger waste, then you have been made the victim of a very old and terrible lie. There is no rectitude whatsoever† (O’Brien 269). War, for O’Brien, is inherently devoid of morality; so any action occurring as a part of war is fruit from a poisonous tree—it is tainted and cannot be separated to be made clean, or right. True war stories acknowledge this. To say that there can be moral action as two sides are determined to kill more of them while they are trying to kill more of you, is an absurdity. The fighting and conflict, the struggle to maintain one’s humanity in the face of death and dying is challenging to say the least. Four times within â€Å"How to Tell a True War Story† Oà ¢â‚¬â„¢Brien tells the story of Curt Lemon being killed by a landmine. Each time the story is told, there is a new variant, or one taken away; his changes in language, words,  and details range from revolting to beautiful. Certain things change, but the story stays the same—there is death and loss everywhere. That is the story, the true war story. No matter how it is told, Lemon dies and Riley will never laugh with him again. Contrast this with Krakauer who writes Into the Wild after having already written a magazine article on Chris McCandless. Krakauers â€Å"Selections from into the Wild† could not be considered a true war story in the way that O’Brien defines it, because the selection itself is an act of morality. The magazine article Krakauer wrote prior to his writing of the essay can arguably be considered a true war story as it portrays an ill-prepared young man who is done in by his own arrogance. Many who read the article lacked sympathy for the fallen, and instead ridiculed him. People love stories of heroes, but they l ove stories of failures just as well, as long as the failure is some arrogant jerk getting his just deserts. Krakauer could have left the story there, but he did not, he chose to look deeper to get to the truth, to get to the â€Å"absolute occurrence† (O’Brien 277) that O’Brien warns is irrelevant in a true war story. Krakauer wanted to experience what the subject of his story experienced, and make right the wrong he had done with his article—he wants to do the morally responsible thing. Krakauer writes of his journey to set out on the path blazed by McCandless, â€Å"I, too, hope to cross the river. I want to visit the bus. I want to see where McCandless died, to better understand why† (Krakauer 213). Crossing the river—a metaphor used by O’Brien as well—meant facing the unknown in order to learn more and continuing the search for whatever was lost or missing. In some war stories details are important. They can change they the story altogether. They can change an incompetent, arrogant, boy into a disciplined young man who was willing to take up a dangerous challenge just to prove to himself that he could, even if he did not. Krakauer used the essay as tool to change perceptions to ones based on truth; in changing the details he changed the story. Not all war stories are true, in â€Å"How to Tell a True War Story,† Tim O’Brien lays out the elements needed in a war story to be considered true. Jon Krakauer tells a war story, but it is not a true war story by O’Brien’s standards. Morality is the dividing line between Krakauer telling a war  story, a true war story.

Cassius would have been a far better leader in the conspirac essays

Cassius would have been a far better leader in the conspirac essays In the play Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare, the conspirators movement to assassinate Caesar and to establish a new order where everyone is supposedly a freeman is headed by character Brutus. It is considered by many, that Cassius, Brutus' partner, but subsidiary in the movement would have served as a better leader. I completely agree with this assertion. In the play, Brutus is portrayed as being much too noble to effectively lead a conspiracy. He is almost never practical. However, Cassius possess a mind that sounds very practical. In fact, he is portrayed as so honorable, that had he himself been a general and conqueror, the Roman population would have viewed him as highly as they did Caesar. Brutus and Caesar were greatly alike on other things as well. For instance, both were of a greatly charitable nature and neither were "ambitious", although Brutus oftentimes appears in that light throughout the duration of the play. First, it is important to consider the differences between Cassius and Brutus to distinguish between them; what motives drove each man and what qualities of their characters would render them poor or appropriate leaders for a conspiracy. Cassius was covetous, ruthless and devilishly cunning. Brutus was nowhere near as intelligent as Cassius. He was also loyal, and inexperienced. After Caesar's assassination, Cassius had wanted to kill Mark Antony as well, and he did not hesitate to use any methods to finance the conspirators' military campaign. This clearly displays the practical mind that Cassius posses because Mark Antony soon turned out to cause tremendous harm to the lives of all conspirators. Brutus not only allowed for Mark Antony to live, but he also lets him speak to the public at Caesar's funeral. To add to this disgraceful err, he did not even stay at the funeral to listen to what Mark Antony had to say. This act of carelessness costs him his life in the end. ...

How Odds Are Related to Probability

How Odds Are Related to Probability Many times the odds of an event occurring are posted. For example, one might say that a particular sports team is a 2:1 favorite to win the big game. What many people do not realize is that odds such as these are really just a restatement of the probability of an event. Probability compares the number of successes to the total number of attempts made. The odds in favor of an event compares the number of successes to the number of failures.  In what follows, we will see what this means in greater detail. First, we consider a little notation. Notation for Odds We express our odds as a ratio of one number to another. Typically we read ratio A:B as A to B. Each number of these ratios can be multiplied by the same number. So the odds 1:2 is equivalent to saying 5:10. Probability to Odds Probability can be carefully defined using set theory and a few axioms, but the basic idea is that probability uses a real number between zero and one to measure the likelihood of an event occurring. There are a variety of ways to think about how to compute this number. One way is to think about performing an experiment several times. We count the number of times that the experiment is successful and then divide this number by the total number of trials of the experiment. If we have A successes out of a total of N trials, then the probability of success is A/N. But if we instead consider the number of successes versus the number of failures, we are now calculating the odds in favor of an event. If there were N trials and A successes, then there were N - A B failures. So the odds in favor are A to B. We can also express this as A:B. An Example of Probability to Odds In the past five seasons, crosstown football rivals the Quakers and the Comets have played each other with the Comets winning twice and the Quakers winning three times. On the basis of these outcomes, we can calculate the probability the Quakers win and the odds in favor of their winning. There was a total of three wins out of five, so the probability of winning this year is 3/5 0.6 60%. Expressed in terms of odds, we have that there were three wins for the Quakers and two losses, so the odds in favor of them winning are 3:2. Odds to Probability The calculation can go the other way. We can start with odds for an event and then derive its probability. If we know that the odds in favor of an event are A to B, then this means that there were A successes for A B trials. This means that the probability of the event is A/(A B ). An Example of Odds to Probability A clinical trial reports that a new drug has odds of 5 to 1 in favor of curing a disease. What is the probability that this drug will cure the disease? Here we say that for every five times that the drug cures a patient, there is one time where it does not. This gives a probability of 5/6 that the drug will cure a given patient. Why Use Odds? Probability is nice, and gets the job done, so why do we have an alternate way to express it? Odds can be helpful when we want to compare how much larger one probability is relative to another. An event with a probability 75% has odds of 75 to 25. We can simplify this to 3 to 1. This means that the event is three times more likely to occur than not occur.