Thoughts Before Dying Essay Example For Students

Thoughts Before Dying Essay Hunter Creed, a man of 24, looks out at the horizon ahead of him. He thinks of his life: his past, the present, and his future. He doesnt feel any shame for what he has become, he actually feels a little tinge of satisfaction. But he cant justify his actions, and that is what he focuses his thoughts on now. As he sits on top of the rock, his brown hair blowing from the force of gusts of wind, a paradox of thoughts races through his mind. He remembers a past where he was happy. He remembers the love he felt from the people around him, the various ways they encouraged him throughout his life to be a good man. He remembers how he left them behind for a future that he thought was brighter than the one they offered. Hunter now realizes how wrong he is, and sadness starts to well up inside of him. He knows that he is troubled. We will write a custom essay on Thoughts Before Dying specifically for you for only $16.38 $13.9/page Order now Getting up from the rock, he stands straight and tall. Rubbing his unshaven face, he knows what he is going to do. Looking out at the horizon, he whispers sorry, not directed at anyone in particular, then jumps into the void below. His broad, firm body, soars through the air and hits the water beneath. In his last glimpse of life, he relishes the feeling of purity.

1409 Final Review Essay

1409 Final Review Essay 1409 Final Review Essay For all sections you must know both structure and function, as well as why these systems function this way. Chapter 26: Coordination by Neural Signaling The 2 parts of the Central Nervous System and what is the function of each. Brain: sensory fibers, somatic sensory, visceral sensory; Spinal Cord: motor fibers, somatic motor fibers, autonomic motor fibers, sympathetic division, parasympathetic division. The main parts of the brain and what each does. Structure and function of the neuron: be able to label it. Neurons are specialized to conduct nerve impulses and those allow sensory info to reach CNS and nerve impulses allow CNS to send out motor directives in nerve fibers. 527 Know the different types of neurons and how they function in the nervous system. Motor: carry nerve impulses from CNS to muscles or glands; sensory neurons: take nerve impulses from sensory receptors to CNS; Interneurons: parallel the structure of motor neurons and their axons conduct nerve impulses between various parts of the CNS. What is an â€Å"action potential†, how does it work? A rapid change in polarity across an axon membrane as the nerve impulse occurs. If a stimulus causes the axon membrane to depolarize to a certain level, called threshold, an action potential occurs in an all or none manner. The gates of sodium channels open, and sodium flows into the axon. As sodium moves to the inside of the axon, the membrane potential changes from -65mV to +40mV. This is depolarization. The reversal in polarity causes the sodium channels to close and potassium to open. 528 What are neurotransmitters? How do they work? Name specific neurotransmitters and what they do. Chemical stored at the ends of axons that is responsible for transmission across a synapse. 3 steps: 1-Nerve impulses traveling along axon reach axon terminal , gated channels for calcium ions open and enter the terminal. 2-Neurotransmitter molecules are released into the synaptic cleft and they diffuse across the cleft to the postsynaptic membrane. 3-They bind with specific receptor proteins. Ach and NE-Associated with Alzheimers, ACh has either excitatory or inhibitory effect on smooth muscle and glands. Serotonin- involved in thermoregulation, sleeping, emotions, and perception. Dopamine and GABA- Dopamine is involved with emotions, control of motor function, and attention. Endorphins-block the release of substance P and is considered a natural painkiller. Chart on 542 How does caffeine, heroin, marijuana, meth, alcohol, cocaine, ecstasy effect the CNS? Caffeine- helps keep a person awake by interfering with the effects of inhibitory neurotransmitters in the brain; Heroin-travels rapidly to the brain where it is converted to morphine which brings a rush of euphoria. Marijuana- Person experiences mild euphoria along with alterations in vision and judgment; Meth-stimulant, it reverses the effects of fatigue, maintains wakefulness and temporarily elevates mood; Alcohol-depressant, increases the action of GABA, which inhibits motor neurons and increases the release of endorphins; Cocaine-stimulant, interferes with the re-uptake of dopamine at synapses; ectasy-has an overstimulatory effect on neurons that produce serotonin to elevate mood. What are the meninges? Where are they found? What is their function? Protective membranous coverings about the CNS(brain and spinal cord.) 534 Be able to label: the brain~~structure and function 536 Spinal Cord-center for many reflex actions and it provides a means of communication between brain and spinal nerves; brain ventricles- four of them, 2 lateral are inside the cerebrum, 3rd is surrounded by diencephalon, and 4th lies between cerebellum and the pons. Cerebrospinal fluid is continuously produced in the ventricles and circulates through them and flows out between the meninges; cerebrum-largest portion of the brain for humans, last center to receive sensory input and carry out integration before commanding voluntary motor responses, divided

Theory of representation Case Study Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

Theory of representation - Case Study Example The most symbolic event of this political transformation is the recent election of Barack Obama to the office of President. The rest of this essay will critically assess Anne Phillips' "politics of presence" theory of representation, by contrasting it to alternative theories and interpretations forwarded by other scholars. In the introduction to her book 'The Politics of Presence', Anne Phillips states that "most voters know too little about the candidates to make their talents or virtues the basis for political choice. Most voters, indeed, would query whether these should be a central concern. We might all wish to be represented by people we regard as wiser or more able than ourselves, but, faced with a choice between someone more competent and someone whose views we can share, we usually feel safer in giving our support to the latter. The political party provides us with the necessary shorthand for making our political choice: we look at the label rather than the person, and hope we will not be let down." (Phillips, 1998, p.15) The above passage captures the essential dilemma confronting a voter, who is often unsure of which candidate truly represents his/her interests, opinions and beliefs and in turn will help create matching policy measures. Typically, there are no concrete ways in which one can ascertain if a candidate really represents the aspirations of the voter. To this extent the democratic system is said to operate on "the politics of ideas". Anne Phillips' model of representation based on "politics of presence" aims to provide an alternative framework for analyzing representation. At the centre of political representation based on presence is the demand for equality based on gender, race, class and other parameters of a particular democratic society. The well-entrenched politics of ideas, which is the dominant model in the twentieth century, suggests "a broadly secular understanding of politics as a matter of judgement and debate, and expects political loyalties to develop around policies rather than people" (Phillips, 1998, p.16). But either due to the apparent failure of this model of representation or due to the compulsions of modern times, political scientists and public intellectuals are looking at alternative models of representation, based on avenues of "'typical' or 'mirror' or 'random' representation, which they have seen as a better approximation to the old dream of being ruler and ruled in turn, or as a more satisfactory way of ensuring that all interests are adequately addressed" (Phillips, 1998, p.16). Although Anne Phillips does not endorse these radical alternatives to traditional models of democratic representation, the theory based on 'politics of presence' is an effort toward the broader search for alternatives. The politics of presence theory of representation tries to address the sense of political exclusion felt by communities defined by their race, gender or ethnicity. More specifically, the politics of presence "demands for the equal representation of women with men; demands for a more even-handed balance between the different ethnic groups that make up each society; demands for the political inclusion of groups that have come to see themselves as marginalized or

Kuwait and US Universities Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Kuwait and US Universities - Essay Example Education is funded by the Federal, State and Local governments. Education up to high school is compulsory from the ages of five to eighteen. In Kuwait education is funded by the government, and has 8-9 years of compulsory schooling for all children, The Kuwait evaluation and certification system is adopted from the British and American curriculum and the government usually hires teachers from these two countries. This has resulted in developing a comprehensive education system that takes the specific requirements of the region into consideration and educates the youth by consultation and their active participation in the education process. The system also strengthens communication and propagation for reform and addresses â€Å"technical details† for the proper implementation of the education system in the context of recent innovations in technology and the social sciences. In the States education is easily available, with school curricula, funding, funding and policy matters being determined by the school board which has jurisdiction over all schools in its district, with guidance from state legislatures School districts are separate from other local legal authority, with independent budgets and officials.Decisions for educational and testing standards are made by the state government. ... The government of Kuwait provides scholarships for students who qualify and are accepted by Universities in the West, especially in the United States and Britain. In the United States, the age for compulsory education varies with states, and the requirements for essential education is met by educating children in public state certified schools. In most schools in America, education is carried out at three levels, elementary, middle and high school. In all levels children are divided by age, and the exact range of students in different grade levels is different from state to state and area to area. Kuwait has made tremendous strides in education considering that there was absolutely no formal education available at the beginning of the 20th century. Education consisted of a few religious schools that taught reading the Quran, including some basic writing and arithmetic. Because of revenues from oil exports, Kuwait prospered and the government started providing formal education to its citizens. This greatly encouraged education and by 1950 there were more than 65,000 boys and girls studying in many schools. In 1965m following the implementation of a formal constitution for the country, education was considered a basic right for all citizens, and was made compulsory for children between the ages of 6 to 14. The Ministry of Education in Kuwait has prepared a long term education strategy up to the year 2025, to prepare its citizens for life in an increasingly globalised world. The government is also providing training for women to promote female participation in the affairs of the country. In the United States there are more than 85 million students enrolled from kindergarten to graduate schools. Amongst them a few million were also studying in private

Critical Analysis Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words - 1

Critical Analysis - Essay Example This report compares two journal articles highlighting competitor analysis, identifying the varying approaches to competitor analysis and key findings as to best practice for strategic management through competitor monitoring and assessment. Identifying potential opportunities and threats associated with competitor activities is the fundamental purpose of competitor analysis in order to determine whether the business can maintain a competitive advantage and how best to go about doing this. Bergen & Peteraf (2002) describe the importance of competitor analysis as being a positive motivator to increase managerial awareness of external threats and risks, essentially creating a leader who does not take a rather myopic approach to business strategy. The authors suggests that once the competitor has been identified, it is a primary goal to define the market in which the business thrives and determine whether competitors have an edge in finance, product or marketing and look for avenues by which to close this edge through positive business changes. Through this method of competitor analysis, the business understands the overall relevance of competitive activities and prevents the company from being blindsided by surprise moves in similar market environments. The authors propose a detailed, two step framework in competitor analysis in which the most important element is recognizing the level of threat stemming from each competitive entity. For instance, indirect competition is measured along with potential competition and direct competition (Bergen & Peteraf). By identifying competition in this fashion, business leadership creates a company profile based on the level of threat that each competitor maintains in any given business situation. This profile is then compared to long-term company strategy to determine which, if any, internal or external company resources should be allocated to

Denial of Service (DoS) attacks

Denial of Service (DoS) attacks Denial of Service (DoS) attacks may become a major threat to current computer networks. Even a teenager can lunch the DoS attack by using readymade DoS tools. DoS attack is an attack to slow down the legitimate users computer by overloading its resources. The goal of DoS attack is to prevent the legitimate users to access the services, not to gain an unauthorized access or resources. Attackers prevent the legitimate users to access the services by doing flooding of the network, disrupt connections between two machines, and disrupt service to a specific user or system. In simple words, Denial of Service attack on a network is designed to take down the network by sending a large number of random packets. Lunching DoS attack I use the Panther2 tool to lunch a DoS attack. Panther2 is UDP-based attack design for 28.8 or 56 kbps connection. It would do great if attacker used it from fast connection. Panther2 is a nuker that pings multiple ports at once and floods the firewalls with 1000s attacks in very small time and causes firewall shutdown if used from computers with fast connections. Open the panther2 application to do DOS attack. Panther2 application Type the victims ip in the Host box that is 192.168.1.1 and choose the ping -v icmp 127.0.0.1 1024 from the Data drop down menu and click Begin button to lunch the Denial of Service attack. The effect of victims machine Pings the multiple ports at once in very small time increase the CPU consumption and cause the computer resources unavailable. The victims firewall has to analysis the various ports and detects the every packet that is sent from the Panther2. In my attack, the machine of the victim just slow down a little bit. He complains that browsing the Network Places is take longer than normal and when he try to copy the file from one computer in the network, the process also takes longer than normal. But surfing the internet is still fine. Protection from DoS or DDoS attacks Denial of Service (DoS) attacks may become a major threat to current computer networks. Yahoo, E*Trade, Amazon.com and eBay were attacked by DDoS in the week of February 7, 2000. It can cause the loss of a lot of money if the attacker attacks like those sites. Defending and protecting your machine from DoS or DDoS attack is critical. There is no method to 100% secure from DoS or DDoS attack. There are various methods to prevent the machine from DoS or DDoS attack. Among these, there are main important 6 methods. They are Disabling unused services and ports Applying Security Patches and Updating the Software Using Firewall and Intrusion Detection System (IDS) software Protection against DDoS Attacks Based on Traffic Level Measurements Filtering Dangerous Packets Tuning System Parameters Disabling unused services and ports Disabling the UDP echo or character generator services will help to defend against DoS or DDoS attacks if they are not required. The unused network services and ports should be disabled to prevent the DoS or DDoS attacks. Applying Security Patches and Updating the Software The machine should be applied the latest security patches and update the system software. Applying security patches and updating the software can reduce the current system bugs and use the latest security techniques available to minimize the effect of DDoS attacks. It cannot protect when the attacker uses the packets that are similar to legitimate traffic or pure flood network bandwidth. Using Firewall and Intrusion Detection System (IDS) software A host computer and a network can guard themselves against being a victim of a DDoS attack if the system uses IDS software. IDS detect DDoS attacks either by using the database of known signatures or by recognizing anomalies in system behaviors. Firewall can protect the unauthorized accesses from the outsiders. It blocks the unauthorized incoming traffics to the system, so the system must be safe within the safe limitation. Protection against DDoS Attacks Based on Traffic Level Measurements It defense against the DDoS attack by monitoring the traffic levels. A DDoS module is attached to a given server making it a virtual server and the module relies on a buffer through which all incoming traffic enters. If the traffic level becomes higher, almost all incoming packets will be dropped to make the stable of the machine. Illegitimate traffic is recognized by its higher mean of traffic level and can be effectively blocked the DDoS attacks. Filtering Dangerous Packets Most vulnerability attacks send specifically crafted packets to exploit vulnerability on the victims machine. It requires inspection of packet headers and often deeper into the data portion of packets in order to recognize the malicious traffic and defense them. But most firewalls and routers cannot do the data inspection and filtering also requires the use of an inline device. Intrusion Prevention Systems (IPS) could be used to filter or alter them in transit. IPS acts like IDS, it recognizes the packets by signatures. Using IPS in high bandwidth networks can costly. Tuning System Parameters Tuning system parameters will help protect the network from small to moderate DoS or DDoS attacks. Processor Utilization some programs can show the processor loads. If a single program unusually take the high amount of CPU (>90%) this may be a vulnerable application targeted by a DoS attack. Network I/O performance dropped packets or network collisions can be seen by netstat command in the command prompt. Memory Utilization the memory usage of the programs can be viewed from Task Manager. Having large amount of free memory can be stabilized the system. I used HxD Hexeditor version 1.6.1.0 and Hex Workshop version 6.0 to decipher the text. HxD Hexeditor version 1.6.1.0 Open the HxD application. The Deciphered text is A password is a combination of characters associated with your user name that allow you to access certain computer resources. To help prevent unauthorized users from accessing those computer resources, you should keep your password confidential. As you enter your password, most computers hide the actual password characters by displaying some other characters, such as asterisks. Hex Workshop Open the Hex Workshop. Fileà  New to input the hex code and decipher. The deciphered text is A password is a combination of characters associated with your user name that allow you to access certain computer resources. To help prevent unauthorized users from accessing those computer resources, you should keep your password confidential. As you enter your password, most computers hide the actual password characters by displaying some other characters, such as asterisks. References JelenaMirkovic, SvenDietrich, DavidDittrich, PeterReiher, Internet Denial of Service: Attack and Defense Mechanisms, Prentice Hall PTR, 2004, ISBN: 0-13-147573-8. http://www.cert.org/tech_tips/denial_of_service.html Earl Carter, Cisco Secure Intrusion Detection System, Cisco Press 1st Edition, 2001, ISBN: 158705034X Robert J. Shimonski, Security+ Study Guide and DVD Training System, Syngress, 2002, ISBN: 1931836728.

one flew over the cuckoos nest Essay -- essays research papers

ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOOS NEST Ken Kesey's novel One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest takes place in a mental hospital. The main character, or protagonist is Randle P. McMurphy, a convicted criminal and gambler who feigns insanity to get out of a prisoners work ranch. The antagonist is Nurse Ratched also referred to as The Big Nurse . She is in charge of running the mental ward. The novel is narrated by a patient of the hospital, an American Indian named Chief Bromden. Chief Bromden has been a patient at the hospital longer than any of the others, and is a paranoid-schizophrenic, who is posing as a deaf mute. The Chief often drifts in and out between reality and his psychosis. The conflict in the novel is between McMurphy and The Big Nurse which turns into a battle of mythic proportion. The center of One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest is this battle between the two, which Kesey uses to represent many of our cultures most influential stories. The dominant theme in this novel is that of conformity and it's pressure on today 's society. In the novel conformity is represented as a machine , or in Chief Bromden's mind a combine . To the Chief, the combine' depicts the conformist society of America, this is evident in one particular paragraph: This excerpt not only explains the Chiefs outlook on society as a machine but also his self outlook and how society treats a person who is unable to conform to society, or more poignantly one who is unable to cope with the inability to conform to society. The chief views the mental hospital as a big machine as well, which is run by The Big Nurse who controls everyone except McMurphy with wires and a control panel. In the Chiefs eyes McMurphy was missed by the combine, as the Chief and the other patients are casualties of it. Therefore McMurphy is an unconformist and is unencumbered by the wires of The Big Nurse and so he is a threat to the combine. McMurphy represents the antithesis to the mechanical regularity, therefore he represents nature and it's unregularity. A nother key theme in Kesey's novel is the role of women is society and how it contradicts the males. In keeping with the highly contrasting forces of conformity verses creativity Kesey proceeds to compare the male role to spontaneity, sexuality, and nature and the female role to conformity, sexual repression and ultimately the psychological castration of the male. Nurse ... ...e land to the white people is tied into the female role theme in the story. His mother's emasculation of his father made him smaller not literally but psychologically weakening him enough to sell the land and become victim to the combine: This excerpt best represents Keseys use of combining themes, and especially represent the story of the native Americans. Kesey combined The role of women, conformity, and the civilization of the native American throughout the novel. Kesey expertly weaves several very strong stories and themes in to the American myth of Randel McMurphy. He does so in a way that makes a particularly strong statement about American culture. Kesey makes a significant argument about the mechanical regularity supported by Western Civilization. By using Chief Bromden as the Narrator Kesey pulls the reader right in to the middle of the story and also The Great Conversation by using the only character that can shed light on all of the dominant themes present in the novel . Kesey's work takes on a shape outside of the mental hospital which for most readers is hard to relate with, and uses the insane to challenge some very real aspects and arguments present in today's world.