Thursday, October 31, 2019

APP5HintonN Epi2 Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

APP5HintonN Epi2 - Essay Example If the margin of error, for instance, is pegged at minus five in the high exposure areas, that will be twenty one units less five units. The result will be a low exposure at sixteen units. Upon the other hand, if the margin of error is assumed at plus five units in the areas with low exposure to pesticide, the result will be a classification of high exposure at twenty four or nineteen plus five. It will therefore be a case of a high becoming a low and a low becoming a high. The allowance for error given here cannot render validity to the result of the sampling. Margins of error can affect the validity of statistical researches. In the afore-stated situation, the given margin of error seems to be high at plus or minus twelve. Bigger margins such as this one here will more likely be unreliable. (Fontaine, Beth. How to Calculate Margin of Error. eHow. [internet]) The error though will not change the measure of association because the margin is either a plus or a minus. In the study of association between patients diagnosed for HIV and the number of their lifetime sexual partners, a confounding factor can result into an error.

Tuesday, October 29, 2019

Should the federal government legalize the use of marijuana Research Paper

Should the federal government legalize the use of marijuana - Research Paper Example Such studies have been quoted as proof of the good qualities of the drug whenever the subject of legalizing marijuana is brought up. However, most of these studies do not tackle the issue about common mental problems that are experienced by patients when they consume marijuana in order to contain pain symptoms. It is a recognized fact that marijuana can cause anxiety problems, as well as depression, in all users. Using marijuana can also set off schizophrenic characteristics in individuals who are predisposed to getting this condition. These are facts that are never directly addressed by scholars who study marijuana users. The word ‘marijuana’ refers to a concotion of flowers, dried leaves, seeds and stems that originate from Cannabis sativa, which is the hemp plant. This mixture has mind-altering substances like delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), among other related chemicals. This concoction usually also contains substances such as hash oil and hashish. Marijuana is said to be the most popular illegal drug in nations all around the world. There are a number of nations that have taken the step of banning its use, however. In America, the Federal Government does not support the proposed legalization of marijuana which has been proposed by many state governments. This means that, in some cases, federal laws will clash with state laws. There are 18 states that have legalized the use of marijuana for medical purposes. In other states, local governments are involved in debates concerning the legalization of marijuana for medical, as well as social purposes. For the most part, many users of marijuana do not consider the adverse effects of the drug, when proposing its legalization. This is something that has marked the majority of debates in which the advocates of the legalization of marijuana support the notion that it has medicinal properties that even serve to

Sunday, October 27, 2019

Introduction The History Of Schizophrenia Psychology Essay

Introduction The History Of Schizophrenia Psychology Essay Schizophrenia from the Greek word (schizo) means split and (phrenia) means mind is a psychiatric disorder characterised by positive, negative and cognitive dysfunctions (Andreasen, 1997; Meltzer, 1999a, b; Meltzer et al., 1999; Weinberger and Gallhofer, 1997). These symptoms are characterized by delusions, hallucinations, loss of abstract thinking and difficulty to differentiate between reality and fantasy. In general, symptoms differ from one person to another. Schizophrenia has been known to mankind since the ancient Egyptians. The ancient Egyptians described disturbances in thought and behaviour which is seen in schizophrenia. Many of the schizophrenia symptoms have been described in ancient Greek, Romans and Chinese scripts. During that time, these societies had an awareness of psychotic disorders and believed they were caused by demons and evil spirits. Treatment of psychotic disorders was exorcising of the demons which varied enormously from mild and safe treatment such as exposing the patient to certain music to more invasive and fatal treatment such as drilling into the patients skull (Schizophrenia.com, (nd). The History of Schizophrenia.[online] Available: http://www.schizophrenia.com/history.htm. Last accessed 13 December 2009). Our understanding and differentiation of schizophrenia from other mental disorders improved and influenced by Huglings-Jacksons postulations in 1984. His hypothesis influences most of schizophrenia researchers until now such as (Andreasen et al., 1995; Meares, 1999a, b). He classified psychosis as a neurological disorder and categorised excessive behaviour as positive symptoms and absence in emotions, speech and social withdrawal as negative symptoms. The most important of his hypothesis is that he proposed that negative symptoms are caused as a result of abnormalities in the brain and positive symptoms result from cognitive deficits (as cited in Beck, 2009) Another important scientist is Emil Kraepelin, a German psychiatrist, who introduced the term dementia praecox in 1896. He observed a number of young patients and came to a conclusion from his extensive clinical observation with three symptoms; hebephrenia (purposeless, disorganised) catatonia (immobility and anxiety) and paranoia (delusions and hallucinations). He grouped them under dementia praecox (early dementia) as he observed these symptoms in young adult patients. He also identified working memory deficits, attentional deficits and lack of organisation (Kraepelin et al., 1919) The founding father of schizophrenia is Eugen Bleuler, a Swedish psychiatrist, who introduced the schizophrenia term and classified schizophrenia as a mental disorder (Bleuler and Zinkin, 1950) and went beyond Kraepelins observations. He characterised schizophrenia symptoms into primary symptoms and secondary symptoms. Primary symptoms include social withdrawal and attentional deficit and were present in all schizophrenia patients and had brain abnormalities causes. Secondary symptoms which include delusions, hallucination, catatonia and these symptoms were not essential for diagnosis and they had no pathological brain abnormalities. He proposed that there is a link between underlying neurological pathology that results in the manifestation of the symptoms (as cited in Beck, 2009) Besides the positive and negative symptoms experienced by schizophrenia patient cognitive deficits are also one of the core symptoms experienced by schizophrenia patients. Cornblatt and his colleagues (1997) pointed out that attentional deficits and other cognitive deficits observed in patients are part of the disorder symptoms but they are independent of the positive and the negative symptoms and do not respond to treatment (Cornblatt et al., 1997). Cognitive deficits often lead to the expression of psychosis (Erlenmeyer-Kimling et al., 2000) and tend to be no deterioration of the symptoms over time (Albus et al., 2002). Cognitive deficits present even after subsidence of psychosis and unaffected by antipsychotic treatment (Harvey and Keefe, 2001; Keefe et al., 2007). Measurement and Treatment Research to Improve Cognition in Schizophrenia (MATRICS) As a result of the devastated implication of this disorder, research has now started to focus on developing drugs to improve cognition in schizophrenia patients and also to improve social and employment. This led the National Institute of Mental Health (NIH) to the initiation of the MATRICS (Marder and Fenton, 2004). The MATRICS initiative aim is to improve current treatment and also to develop new drugs that help improve cognition in patients. (Green et al., 2004); MATRIC Program (nd) MATRICS.ucla.edu. [online] Available: http://www.matrics.ucla.edu/.htm. Last accessed 13 December 2009). MATRICS developed a consensus that concluded the main common features of cognitive deficits found in schizophrenia patients. These seven cognitive deficits are: verbal learning and memory, visual learning and memory, reasoning and problem solving, speed of processing, working memory and social cognition. These seven domains should be represented in a cognitive battery to evaluate the effects of new drugs on cognition in schizophrenia (Nuechterlein et al., 2004). In order to develop new drugs to enhance cognition in schizophrenia, preclinical test batteries are required to model schizophrenia cognitive domains in vivo. Floresco and his colleagues (2005) considered two methods for developing cognitive paradigm and animal models to mimic schizophrenia symptoms by (i) using lesions or drugs intervention to alter systems which contributes to schizophrenia disorder and (ii) to develop animal models that characterise schizophrenia symptomatology (Floresco et al., 2005) Animal models to mimic schizophrenia in Laboratory: PCP was first used as a surgical anaesthetic but it was found to cause schizophrenia-like symptoms in patients after surgery (Morris et al., 2005). PCP antagonises non-competitively N-methyl-D-Aspartate (NMDA) receptor (Anis et al., 1983). It binds to site within channel pore which is accessible when the pore is open and antagonism is use use-dependent (Morris et al., 2005). PCP also antagonises other ion channels such as voltage-dependent sodium and potassium channels and nicotinic acetylcholine receptor in the same manner as the NMDA receptor but not use-dependent'(Oswald et al., 1984). It also antagonises membrane proteins of sigma receptors and all dopamine and noradrenaline transporters (Garey and Heath, 1976; Pubill et al., 1998). These actions of PCP are less potent than its actions on the NMDA receptor. Yet, schizophrenia patients show reduced CNS nicotinic receptors activity and elevated limbic dopamine level and compromised sodium and potassium channel function (Morris et a l., 2005). Thus, these actions contribute partially to the schizophrenia symptoms and action at NMDA receptor remains the main site of action (Morris et al., 2005) Showing PCP and ketamine to cause schizophrenia-like symptoms in healthy patients ((Adler et al., 1999; Allen and Young, 1978; Krystal et al., 1994; Luby et al., 1959) led to hypothesis that schizophrenia is related to NMDA hypofunction in the limbic system (Olney and Farber, 1995) which is supported by post-mortem examination studies in schizophrenia patients showing evidence of decreased expression of NMDA receptor subunits and associated proteins in the brain of schizophrenia patient compared to control (Noga et al., 1997; Sokolov, 1998) Thus, PCP has been used to model cognitive deficits in animal models (Jentsch and Roth, 1999; Mandillo et al., 2003; Sams-Dodd, 1998). Sub-chronic administration of PCP has been found to produce schizophrenia-like symptoms in rodents (Jentsch and Roth, 1999). Cognitive dysfunction induced by sub-chronic injection of PCP results in deficits in working memory and inhibtitory in control in rodents and monkeys (Jentsch and Roth, 1999). In the present study, we are only concerned with working memory. The term working memory was first introduced by David Olton and Werner Honig in the 1970s (as cited in Dudchenko, 2004). Working memory is defined the retrieval of information learnt over a delay of time within sessions but not necessarily between sessions (Dudchenko, 2004). The holeboard task was developed by Oades in1978 and this behavioural test is useful as it allows each in the test to develop its own method of finding food pellet (Oades and Isaacson, 1978) making this behavioural test a good experimental design to assess spatial working memory in rodents. This test rely on intact hippocampus and performance was impaired following lesions in the ventral tegmentum (Oades, 1982) The test can only be carried out in rats. The test apparatus consisted of an arena 70-70-50cm with 16 holes 3.5cm wide and 2cm deep (Oades and Isaacson, 1978). The animals are left to explore the arena to adapt to the apparatus with food being placed in all of the holes, the animals deprived from food before the beginning of the test and this time food is only allocated at 4 holes out of the 16 holes (Oades and Isaacson, 1978) The test which have been developed to mimic deficits in working memory seen in schizophrenia patients are useful to assess working memory in rodents but with difficulties and confliction in defining working memory between rodents and humans make it hard to model this cognition in animal models and to assess the effect of antipsychotic drugs. The core aim of this study was to assess the effects of sub-chronic PCP treatment on the spatial working memory using the 16-hole. It is expected that sub-chronic treated rats will perform poorly in this task as sub-chronic PCP induce deficits in working memory in animal models (Jentsch and Roth, 1999). Objectives of this experiment is firstly is the habituation of 16 female rats to the 16-hole-board for 3 days and the food is available in all of the 16 holes, then the food will be placed in only 4 holes and the animals will be trained to eat and visit these holes only for 7 days and is then followed by the administration of sub-chronic PCP (2mg/kg, n=8) or vehicle (0.9% saline, n=8) intraperitoneally for 7 days followed by washout of the drug for 7 days and then carrying out the behavioural test.

Friday, October 25, 2019

Hunger :: essays research papers

Do You Think the Boy’s Mother Made the Proper Choice in Dealing with Her Son?   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  In Richard Wright’s â€Å"Hunger†, a mother is forced with a difficult decision. Should she â€Å"baby† her child and prevent him from fighting, or should she encourage him to fight and â€Å"stand up like a man†? Unfortunately, the mother’s decision is a clear one. The mother tells the boy to stand up for himself and fight back.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  The story â€Å"Hunger† is a story with a very clear message. The message of this story is that a person at any age, instead of hiding from his problems, must face his or her problems. In â€Å"Hunger†, the reader understands how to make a living and support himself or herself. After the father of the boy leaves him, the boy and his mother had to become the householders. Wright, very clearly, describes the situation of the boy’s family situation. The main characters are the mother and her son.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  The author of this story describes how the mother sends her son to the grocery store. On his way to the grocery store, the boy is attacked by a couple of neighborhood boys. When the boy comes home and tells his mother what happens, the mother tells the boy that he must stand up for himself by sending him to the store to face the boys. Every time the boy goes to the store, the neighborhood boys would beat him up. Finally, the boy got tired of getting beaten and defends himself: he beats the boys with a stick The boy finally wins â€Å"the right to the streets of Memphis† meaning that that night, he won the right of being safe on the streets of where he lived, Memphis.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  The mother plays a very important part in this story. The mother from the beginning of the story is dealt with a difficult decision of how to feed her 2 boys after her husband leaves her. Since the husband worked, he brought food into the house, but when he left, there was no one who worked. The mother had to get a job, which made her tired. When the mother came home from work tired, she would send the boy to the store. When the mother found out that the neighborhood boys were beating up her son, she repeatedly sent him to the store, so he faces the boys and learns to stand up for himself.

Thursday, October 24, 2019

How Global brands compete Essay

1. Introduction Over the years, global branding has turned out to be a key aspect for effecting management considerations globally.   Indeed, it has turned out to the main defining objective of various companies around the globe. 2. Importance of the global branding Global branding is not important to the global consumers. Global branding of different products has assimilated a marketing notion and do not necessarily indicate a sense of superiority. Indeed, it was not until recently did people stop associating global brands with American values, a notion which was very misleading (Douglas, John, and Earl, 2004).   The most important aspect to consider when shopping for different items is the quality they posses as opposed to the name.   Following the recent anti-Globalization protests against some companies like Coca Cola, McDonald’s, and Nike due to their production processes and products’ negative impacts to the people, the truth has been revealed indicating that bulk of their products are indeed not superior 3. Characteristics that consumers associate global brands with Globally, consumers associate global brands with three main characteristics. To begin with, they belief that global brands are indeed superior in technology used to produce them as well ass the quality of the products. They also see a major consideration of continued improvement to maintain their global positions.   Douglas et al (2004) points out that others view the global brand as a major source of identity and prestige where they are able to get much ‘bigger’, much better, and much idealistic products that derive their overall sense of identity.   Finally, the notion of social responsibility is viewed to be a role of the globally branded companies and products as opposed to the local communities.   Douglas et al (2004) points out that many of the locally ignored notions like pollution demands and excessive water usages become the point of controversy when the globally branded companies progress towards the same direction. 4. How global brand once influenced my decision Since when I was young, my dad had always emphasized on the need to be patriotic.   As a result, he insisted that we should seek to promote locally made products at all times. Indeed, he led us by a good example as we grew up knowing only the local products and praising them always. However, with the onset of the global branding that the hybrid Toyota vehicles were given, I could not resist to get a hybrid Toyota Prius to share the same global taste status and prestige. Though it never invoked conflict at home, my dad expressed his dissatisfaction with my decision. 5. Challenges and transnational companies with reference to international brands Global markets are faced with major competitions from other giants in the same level. Large companies like Motorola face it off with Nokia while others like Toyota compete with Ford and Volkswagen in the global market.   This calls for great innovation in technology and vast resources application to maintain the brand name.   To add to that, the consumers have vast negative views about global brands which are not easily identifiable taking into consideration that they are vastly distributed in time and space. Many of the consumers’ demands like involvement with corporate social responsibilities are in most of the cases counter productive.   Besides, the fast rising numbers of antiglobals and agnostics threat to kill the overall spirit of the global brands hereby posing a major threat to the superiority consideration (Douglas et al, 2004).. 6. Addressing transnational companies’ problems In conclusion, it is clear that a solution should be developed to anchor the transnational companies from possible subsidence. They should seek to create credible myths that add value to the consumers as opposed to less-than-credible myths that are short tern unsustainable on a long term. To add to that, transnational companies should treat the antiglobals as part of the consumers to avoid unfavorable fights with them as they totally taint the global brands.   This should be done through investment in projects that will positively convince even the skeptics.   Social responsibilities should be approached from an entrepreneurship point of view where extra involvements of the companies seek to pro-actively determine and derive positive returns to the company.   Finally, the transnational companies must seek to manage the dark side of the consumers’ perception about the negative side of their perception as opposed to concentration on only the best side of their global produ cts.

Wednesday, October 23, 2019

Viloin Technical/Descriptive Essay

The crowd waited in silence as minutes had passed. Then suddenly the velvet red curtains began to part. Rushing to opposite sides of the stage revealing a girl. The spotlight shining bright directly on her, you could see the fear in her glossy hazel eyes as she took a quick glimpse into the crowd. She slowly closed her eyes and gently laid her head on her shoulder rest of her beautiful classical 4/4 violin. We watched as she placed her fingers correctly and there it was, the first note. A beautiful A flat. So petite and perfect you knew her performance was going to be astonishing.A violin is a beautiful instrument to look at. That beauty, which comes from the instrument's curved and often shiny body, is what helps make the sound you hear. The body of a violin is hollow. The strings are above the body, suspended by a bridge. The bridge is a small, maple piece of wood. This bridge is secured on the instrument because of the tension of the strings. When the violin is played, the vibrati on of the strings is transferred from the bridge to the body. The vibration is amplified in the body of the violin, and this is the sound you hear.The sound of a well played violin is the sound of emotions, from the length of sadness to the shortness of expectations. Sometimes, it's low pitch, whispering like the wind and warm like a blanket and then it gets higher and higher until the pitch is so high, it's borderline painful, but just before you reach the pain†¦ it stops and get silenced†¦ and then whispers again. The violin is the highest pitch instrument in the orchestra like the higher part of a piano. Sometimes the violin can sound scratchy when you mess up but other times it sounds like harmony and peace when you succeed.Sounds like the high pitch of the bird singing outside your window that wakes you up in the morning. Majestic like water, drops of water creating ripples of sound. Waves that flow into your ears and give you those goosebumps that make the little hai rs on your arms stand up. The beautiful sound that makes your ears ask for more and more of its gorgeousness . That when they stop playing you feel that little crack in your heart from the loss of the astonishing sound you crave for more of. She pulled back on her bow creating her last note. Her last note was a decrescendo on the note E.She drew back her bow slowly not quite letting the beautiful sound end just yet, It slowly faded away into the distance, my ears lingered to hear the note that was disappearing into the darkness. My eyes were closed , secretly begging to hear more but all i heard was silence. I opened my eyes and saw she had picked up her bow. The audience was so astonished they sat in silence. That pause felt like eternity but then i stood to my feet and began to applaud her, as everybody else in the crowd followed me and a tear fell off my cheek, Knowing that was my student on that stage.