Technology And The Medical Field Essay - 1404 Words

We are currently living in the age of science and technology where the products of technology have revolutionized our lives becoming essential elements in numerous areas of life. Nothing has impacted on the lives of human beings more than the computer. There cannot be any field devoid of the effect of computer applications ranging from education, agriculture, and security; computers play crucial roles in all sectors. According to Silva (1), the introduction of computers in the medical arena has brought about transformative effects on how medical practices are being conducted and method of provision of health care. From medical procedures, patient diagnosis and administrative tasks, computers have simplified services in the medical field in addition to streamlining record keeping thus enhancing patient and health care staff relationships. Computers have simplified tasks and accorded health care professionals ample time to take care of their patients. Whatever service in the medical fi eld we enjoy today could not be achieved without the priceless contribution of computers. Thus, my endeavor is to research and discuss how computers have contributed to the medical field as well as identifying various challenges brought about by the adoption of the computers. Computers have a vital role in the medical field, and without them, productivity and proficiency would decline massively. Computers assist with patient records, administrative and organizational duties together withShow MoreRelatedMedical Technology And The Medical Field2536 Words   |  11 PagesMedical technology is a field that is growing more every day. Concerning diabetic patients in the hospital. The use of glucose monitors, such as the Nova Stat Strip meter used at Greenview Regional Hospital, are used to help reduce documentation and medical errors with diabetic patients. The Nova Stat Strip meter helps give providers quick and accurate blood glucose values at the bedside. In dealing with medical t echnology, there also comes the IT department, who are the ones that are managingRead MoreThe Technology Of The Medical Field1253 Words   |  6 PagesFinal Session Paper Have you ever wondered what the world would be like in another century or lifetime? Do you think of robots instead of actual people? With the rate of how fast technology is advancing it is very well possible to have this thought. Technology in the medical field is specifically how all of these things would be possible. In the world of medicine today, researchers are finding ways to treat disease and even further try to detect it in a fetus and mend it before the baby is born.Read MoreTechnology And The Medical Field Essay1985 Words   |  8 Pagessubject†. The medical field requires an enormous amount of knowledge to be about to be a practicing doctor, which explains the vast amount of education someone has to obtain. The human body remains to be a mysterious being, and doctors strive to interpret symptoms to diagnose and treat the body. After the introduction of technology to the medical field, doctors made enormous strides in their practices. Technology has overall favorable effects on the practices of doctors and their medical knowledge.Read MoreThe Impact Of Technology On The Medical Field1206 Words   |  5 Pagesin healthcare are moving at a very fast pace in the world today. There are no signs that in the future, it will slow down. The impact of technology on the medical field is immense. Computers have provided technological advancement in many fields but in the field of medicine, in the last decade, advancements have had an enormous impact. Innovative technologies assist healthcare professionals to diagnose, treat and care for patients. For example, information is readily accessible, test results areRead MoreResearch on Technology in the Medical Field1487 Words   |  6 PagesResearch on Technology in the Medical Field Certain types of technology have the potential to be very beneficial to the medical field. There are a few types of technology that may be particularly beneficial to medicine such as 3D printing, electronic health records, and robotic surgery. 3D printing can change medicine by being able to print bones, organs, and custom hearing aids. Electronic health records make medical information more available to patients and make it easier for doctors and nursesRead MoreHealthcare Technology And The Medical Field771 Words   |  4 PagesHealthcare technology is very crucial in the medical field and its constantly changing and updating over the years. The healthcare system went from a large amount of paperwork and files to electronic databases. Today, patients have access to their electronic health records, EOB’s, and etc. The new technology today was developed to make everything more efficient and more accessible to everyone. It was developed to meet everyone’s needs within th e medical field. In one article, it states that the healthcareRead MoreTechnology in the Medical Field Essay975 Words   |  4 PagesIn today’s medical field technology plays a big role when it comes to patient care. Technology is huge when it comes to giving the patient the best type of quality care when they are in the hospital. In the old days people would just write it down on a sheet of paper and record it by hand, which caused mistakes. Now with the Electronic Health Record those mistakes are drastically declining. Statistics have shown that using the Electronic Health Record has lowered Nursing mistakes as well as improvedRead MoreTechnology And Its Impact On The Medical Field1562 Words   |  7 PagesIn the world we live in today technology is always advancing; having many great effects in our personal lives and in the medical field, one of which being the technical advances on magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). MRIs have been a great resource for us to use to help d iagnose people in a way we have never been able to before. â€Å"A magnetic resonance imaging scan uses a large magnet, radio waves, and a computer to create a detailed cross-sectional image of the patient’s internal organs and structuresRead MoreTechnology And The Medical Field Advances875 Words   |  4 Pages Technology has been advancing throughout history. People life has changed. Most of the people now have longer lifespan than before. As technology advances, the medical field advances accordingly. With these advances, people can survive from deadly disease. For example, chickenpox was deadly before a vaccine was found. With modern medicine, many diseases became curable. However, DNA mutations diseases where it survive and passed through our DNA to many generation can be difficult to cure and trackedRead MoreReproductive Technology And The Medical Field1946 Words   |  8 Pages Reproductive technology is one of the most revolutionary developments in the medical field today. One of the newest and most advanced developments in modern medicine is in vitro fertilization (IVF). In vitro fertilization is a reproductive technology in which an egg and sperm are combined in a petri dish and then transferred to a woman’s uterus. This technique is widely used for parents struggling wit h infertility. This advancement in technology has created the possibility for what scientists

Lymphatics Webquest Free Essays

Lymphatics web quest Suggested site- www. cdc. gov, feel free to use other reliable sites as well. We will write a custom essay sample on Lymphatics Webquest or any similar topic only for you Order Now 1. What animal can transmit Cryptococcus? Wild birds like pigeons. 2. Can dogs and cats get Cryptococcus? Yes 3. What is the infectious agent for Bubonic Plague? Yersinia pestis 4. By how much was the world population reduced during the Plague pandemic? About 450 million to between 350 and 375 million. 5. What year (within the past 100 years) did the world experience a flu pandemic? 1918 6. What are 3 symptoms of chikungunya fever? Fever, vomiting, nausea, head ache, and joint pain. 7. What bacterium causes Lyme’s disease? Borrelia 8. What is ‘erythema migrans? ’ A rash often seen in the early stage of Lyme disease 9. Find a disease transmitted by rabbits and list 2 symptoms. Tularemia it gives you sweats and fever. 10. What are symptoms of guinea worm disease? There are usually no symptoms until about a year after infection. Before the worm comes out the person may develop a fever, swelling, and pain in the area. 1. How long can a guinea worm grow? Adults are about 2-3 feet long. 12. Describe lymphocytic filariasis. A parasitic disease caused by the African eye worm. The adult worm can only live in the human lymph system. 13. On what day of the year does world TB day occur? March 24th 14. How do seasonal, avian, and pandemic flu outbreaks differ? Seasonal flu follows predictable patterns. Pandemic flu is very rare. Avian flu is a virus with the pote ntial to become a pandemic. 5. What childhood diseases does the CDC recommend children to be vaccinated against? Chickenpox, Flu, and measles 16. Find one type of cancer caused by a virus. Cervical cancer 17. What is the cause of rheumatic fever? Rheumatic fever can occur after an infection of the throat with a bacterium called streptococcus phogenes. 18. List 1 disease caused by a fungus. Histoplasmosis 19. What is a telltale symptom of whooping cough? Coughing making a whooping sound. How to cite Lymphatics Webquest, Essay examples Lymphatics Webquest Free Essays Lymphatics web quest Suggested site- www. cdc. gov, feel free to use other reliable sites as well. We will write a custom essay sample on Lymphatics Webquest or any similar topic only for you Order Now 1. What animal can transmit Cryptococcus? Wild birds like pigeons. 2. Can dogs and cats get Cryptococcus? Yes 3. What is the infectious agent for Bubonic Plague? Yersinia pestis 4. By how much was the world population reduced during the Plague pandemic? About 450 million to between 350 and 375 million. 5. What year (within the past 100 years) did the world experience a flu pandemic? 1918 6. What are 3 symptoms of chikungunya fever? Fever, vomiting, nausea, head ache, and joint pain. 7. What bacterium causes Lyme’s disease? Borrelia 8. What is ‘erythema migrans? ’ A rash often seen in the early stage of Lyme disease 9. Find a disease transmitted by rabbits and list 2 symptoms. Tularemia it gives you sweats and fever. 10. What are symptoms of guinea worm disease? There are usually no symptoms until about a year after infection. Before the worm comes out the person may develop a fever, swelling, and pain in the area. 1. How long can a guinea worm grow? Adults are about 2-3 feet long. 12. Describe lymphocytic filariasis. A parasitic disease caused by the African eye worm. The adult worm can only live in the human lymph system. 13. On what day of the year does world TB day occur? March 24th 14. How do seasonal, avian, and pandemic flu outbreaks differ? Seasonal flu follows predictable patterns. Pandemic flu is very rare. Avian flu is a virus with the pote ntial to become a pandemic. 5. What childhood diseases does the CDC recommend children to be vaccinated against? Chickenpox, Flu, and measles 16. Find one type of cancer caused by a virus. Cervical cancer 17. What is the cause of rheumatic fever? Rheumatic fever can occur after an infection of the throat with a bacterium called streptococcus phogenes. 18. List 1 disease caused by a fungus. Histoplasmosis 19. What is a telltale symptom of whooping cough? Coughing making a whooping sound. How to cite Lymphatics Webquest, Papers

Leadership Issues for the Organization -myassignmenthelp.com

Question: Write about theLeadership Issues for the Environment of theOrganization. Answer: According to Cook and Glass (2014), it cannot be said with full confidence that if high number of women will be in the position of leadership or power, there will be fewer cases of women harassments. One of the biggest issues is no matter whom so ever is in charge of the companies, companies are failing to provide meaningful trainings. An effective training makes the employees aware of the policies of anti-discrimination and anti-harassment and it tells them that the policies of the company actually means what they says (Ghumman et al., 2013). With the same, many of the studies have been found that the women who stay in power usually do not want to engage on womens issues as well, though, men too sometimes does the same. However, it will be wise to conduct proper and effective training programs in the companies. If the employees get to know they will be severely punished if they break the companys rules and regulations, they themselves will think twice before committing any such case s. References: Cook, A., Glass, C. (2014). Women and top leadership positions: Towards an institutional analysis.Gender, Work Organization,21(1), 91-103. Ghumman, S., Ryan, A. M., Barclay, L. A., Markel, K. S. (2013). Religious discrimination in the workplace: A review and examination of current and future trends.Journal of Business and Psychology,28(4), 439-454. Second Issue: Building team and leading change Kampmark (2013) states that there is no doubt about the fact that Sangakkara is a very talented cricket player and is one of the most efficient captains that the Srilankan cricket team could ever get. It could be clearly concluded that there is a strong need of a perfect leader in the Srilankan cricket team. The players chosen for the last few tournaments were not up to the mark. This had resulted in bad performance of the whole team, as a good team is made only with good players. Sangakkara is a great player with great leadership qualities within himself. Dayasiri Jayasekara, therefore selected Sangakkara as one of the five new set of selectors. Romesh Kaluwitharana is also one among them. References: Kampmark, B. (2013). Australian cricket: the diminishing light.Sport in Society,16(1), 45-55. Third Issue: Admitting mistakes In this news article, Volkswagen pleads guilty to several criminal charges that were stemming from its own diesel scandal of 2016. The scandal had affected 11 million Volkswagen and Audi cars and had devastated the fifty years of goodwill it ever earned (Connor, 2017). It has also affected the subsidiary brands of VW and the hearts of the green customers and buyers who bought the car were completely broken. Kamensky (2016) has stated that it is the very first time that VW ever admitted that it is guilty in any of the court till now. The scandal has also degraded the creditability of management and software engineering professionals. Just for the sake of money the company had risked the environment as well. References: Connor, J. M. (2017). The German Auto-Emissions Scandal: Likely US Antitrust Response. Kamensky, D. (2016). Introducing Corporate Criminal Liability in Ukraine: Terra Incognita.Stetson L. Rev.,46, 89. Comment on the third issue According to the third issue, google is failing to celebrate diversity in the company since 2014. There are only few black Americans left working in the company. This is something that cannot be neglected as such a well known company which is so successful today is lacking leadership values within itself. Diversity is considered as a lens for looking at as for identifying and developing the talents. The way I look at this issue is, when we expect diverse customers, we must ensure that our workforce is diverse as well so that we could learn from our own diverse workforce and make our service more effective so that we can meet the needs of each of our diverse clients. Google must look for the talents in an employee during the recruitment process rather than just discriminating them on the basis of their skin color. It is really a shameful offence in todays era where we celebrate and learn about the leadership style of people like Nelson Mandela in our academic textbooks.

Noli Me Tangere free essay sample

Major Characters of Noli Me Tangere Juan Crisostomo Ibarra y Magsalin, commonly referred to the novel as Ibarra or Crisostomo, is the protagonist in the story. Son of a Filipino business man, Don Rafael Ibarra, he studied in Europe for seven years. [5] Ibarra is also Maria Claras fiance. Maria Clara de los Santos y Alba, commonly referred to as Maria Clara, is Ibarras fiancee. He was raised by Capitan Tiago, San Diegos cabeza de barangay and is the most beautiful and widely celebrated girl in San Diego. In the later parts of the novel, Maria Claras identity was revealed as an illegitimate daughter of Father Damaso, former parish curate of the town, and Dona Pia Alba, wife of Capitan Tiago. In the end she entered local covenant for nuns Beaterio de Santa Clara. In the epilogue dealing with the fate of the characters, Rizal stated that it is unknown if Maria Clara is still living within the walls of the covenant or she is already dead. We will write a custom essay sample on Noli Me Tangere or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page Don Santiago de los Santos, known by his nickname Tiago and political title Capitan Tiago is a Filipino businessman and the cabeza de barangay or head of barangay of the town of San Diego. He is also the known father of Maria Clara. In the novel, it is said that Capitan Tiago is the richest man in the region of Binondo and he possessed real properties in Pampanga and Laguna de Bay. He is also said to be a good Catholic, friend of the Spanish government and was considered as a Spanish by colonialists. Capitan Tiago never attended school, so he became a domestic helper of a Dominican friar who taught him informal education. He married Pia Alba from Santa Cruz. Damaso Verdolagas, or Padre Damaso is a Franciscan friar and former parish curate of San Diego. He is best known as a notorious character that speaks with harsh words and has been a cruel priest during his stay in the town. He is the real father of Maria Clara and an enemy of Crisostomos father, Rafael Ibarra. Later on, he and Maria Clara had bitter arguments whether she marry Alfonso Linares or go to covenant. At the end of the novel, he again re-assigned into a distant town and was found dead one day. In popular culture, when a priest was said to be like Padre Damaso, it means that he is a cruel but respectable individual. When one says a child is anak ni Padre Damaso (child of Padre Damaso), it means that the childs fathers identity is unknown. Filosofo Tacio, known by his Filipinized name Pilosopong Tasyo is another major character in the story. Seeking for reforms from the government, he expresses his ideals in paper written in a cryptographic alphabet similar from hieroglyphs and Coptic figures[13] hoping that the future generations may be able to decipher it and realized the abuse and oppression done by the conquerors. His full name is only known as Don Anastacio. The educated inhabitants of San Diego labeled him as Filosofo Tacio (Tacio the Philosopher) while others called him as Tacio el Loco (Insane Tacio) due to his exceptional talent for reasoning. Elias, is an important character in the story and was once Ibarras mysterious friend. Elias made his first appearance as a pilot during a picnic of Ibarra and Maria Clara and her friends. [15] He wants to revolutionize the country and to be freed from Spanish oppression. The 50th chapter of the novel explores the past of Elias and history of his family. In the past, Ibarras grandfather condemned Elias grandfather of burning a warehouse which lead into the misfortune of Elias family. His father was refused to be married by his mother because his fathers past and family lineage was discovered by his mothers family. In the long run, Elias and his twin sister was raised by their maternal grandfather. When they were teenagers, their distant relatives called them hijo de bastardo or illegitimate children. One day, his sister disappeared which led him to search for her. His search led him into different places, and finally, he became a fugitive and anti-government. Dona Victorina de Espadana, commonly known as Dona Victorina, is an ambitious Filipino woman who classifies herself as a Spanish and mimicking Spanish ladies by putting on heavy make-ups. The novel narrates Dona Victorinas younger days: she had lots of admirers but she never choose one of them because nobody was a Spaniard. Later on, she met Don Tiburcio de Espadana, an official to the customs bureau, which is about ten years junior than her. [18] Even though she got married, they never had a child. Her husband assumes the title as medical doctor even though Tiburcio never attended medical school. Using fake documents and certificates, Tiburcio is practicing illegal medicine. The usage of Tiburcio of the title Dr. also made Victorina to assume the title Dra. (doctora, female doctor). [18] Apparently, she uses the whole name Dona Victorina de los Reyes de de Espadana, with double de to emphasize her marriage surname. 2. Noli Me Tangere and Spanish Period in the Philippines Noli Me Tangere was Rizals first novel. He was 26 years old at the time of ts publication. The work was has been historically significant and was instrumental in the establishing of the Filipino sense of national identity. The book indirectly influenced a revolution although the author actually advocated direct representation to the Spanish government and larger role of the Philippines within Spains political affairs. The novel was written in Spanish, the official language of the colony that was understood by j ust about everyone thanks to the free public education system established by the Spanish government more than two decades before. The novel created so much controversy that only a few days after his arrival, Governor-General Emilio Terrero summoned Rizal to the Malacanang Palace and told him of the charges saying that Noli Me Tangere contained subversive statements. After a discussion, the liberal[citation needed] Governor General was appeased, but mentioned that he was unable to offer resistance against the pressure of the Church to take action against the book. The persecution can be discerned from Rizals letter to Leitmeritz: My book made a lot of noise; everywhere, I am asked about it. They wanted to anathematize me [to excommunicate me] because of it I am considered a German spy, an agent of Bismarck, they say I am a Protestant, a freemason, a sorcerer, a damned soul and evil. It is whispered that I want to draw plans, that I have a foreign passport and that I wander through the streets by night Rizal depiction of nationality by emphasizing the qualities of Filipinos: devotion of a Filipina and her influence to a mans life, the deep sense of gratitude, and the solid common sense of the Filipinos under the Spanish regime. The book was instrumental in creating a unified Filipino national identity and consciousness, as many Filipinos previously identified with their respective regions to the advantage of the Spanish authorities. It lampooned, caricatured and exposed various elements in colonial society. 3. Rizal’s Reasons for Coming Back to the Philippines During his five years absence from the Philippines Rizal had been receiving many letters from his brother Paciano, from his sisters Olimpia, Narcisa, Josefa, Maria, Saturnina, Lucia and her husband Mariano Herbosa, from his mother, and from friends in the Philippines. Hardly had he reached Spain when his friends wrote that a terrible epidemic of cholera was sweeping away thousands of victims in and near Manila. As letters concerning this scourge reached Rizal, they made his sensitive heart yearn to go to their relief. Joses father did not write any letters, but he sent word at every opportunity to say how proud he was of his sons achievements. And his mother, Paciano told him, burst into tears as she read his letters. Jose had taken Pacianos advice and written them only the news that would make them happy. What made Rizal most heartsick was to read how his father was having trouble with the Dominican friars who claimed his land, while the price of sugar was so low that the family nearly faced ruin. The third year Jose was strongly inclined to return, at least as far as Hong Kong, but Paciano urged him to stay away; and his friend Felipe Zamora told him never to come back until he had changed his nationality to German, English, or American, then the Spanish government would not dare to touch him. (01) After Noli Me Tangere had been printed and smuggled into the Philippines, Jose M. Cecilio (02) begged Rizal not to come back to the Islands for at least a year. We will wait and see what effect your book will produce. We are not now going to lose all the good of your brilliant career. We are doing all we can to make your book known; all who have read it are enthusiastic. But you stay there. I will write when you ought to come, as you believe, on account of your mother. He referred to the cataracts in Rizals mothers eyes; he had been preparing ever since 1882 five long years to save her sight. Another cause for many a heartache was the fact that after 1884 he did not receive letters from Leonor Rivera, (who always signed herself Faimis) but he did receive alarming news about her. In March of that year he learned from his friend Jose M. Cecilio that Leonors mother was opposed to her marrying Rizal. In truth, dear namesake, wrote Cecilio, this girl week by week is sick with fever, and it is, as you well know, the result of the ardent passion she feels for you. 4. Propagandas Against Noli Me Tangere Criticism and attacks against the Noli and its author came from all quarters. An anonymous letter signed A Friar and sent to Rizal, dated February 15, 1888, says in part: How ungrateful you are†¦ If you, or for that matter all your men, think you have a grievance, then challenge us and we shall pick up the gauntlet, for we are not cowards like you, which is not to say that a hidden hand will not put an end to your life. A special committee of the faculty of the University of Santo Tomas, at the request of the Archbishop Pedro Payo, found and condemned the novel as heretical, impious, and scandalous in its religious aspect, and unpatriotic, subversive of public order and harmful to the Spanish government and its administration of theses islands in its political aspect. On December 28, 1887, Fray Salvador Font, the cura of Tondo and chairman of the Permanent Commission of Censorship composed of laymen and ordered that the circulation of this pernicious book be absolutely prohibited. Not content, Font caused the circulation of copies of the prohibition, an act which brought an effect contrary to what he desired. Instead of what he expected, the negative publicity awakened more the curiosity of the people who managed to get copies of the book. Assisting Father Font in his aim to discredit the Noli was an Augustinian friar by the name of Jose Rodriguez. In a pamphlet entitled Caiingat Cayo (Beware). Fr. Rodriguez warned the people that in reading the book they commit mortal sin, considering that it was full of heresy. As far as Madrid, there was furor over the Noli, as evidenced by an article which bitterly criticized the novel published in a Madrid newspaper in January, 1890, and written by one Vicente Barrantes. In like manner, a member of the Senate in the Spanish Cortes assailed the novel as anti-Catholic, Protestant, socialistic. It is well to note that not detractors alone visibly reacted to the effects of the Noli. For if there were bitter critics, another group composed of staunch defenders found every reason to justify its publication and circulation to the greatest number of Filipinos. For instance, Marcelo H. Del Pilar, cleverly writing under an assumed name Dolores Manapat, successfully circulated a publication that negated the effect of Father Rodriguez’ Caiingat Cayo, Del Pilar’s piece was entitled Caiigat Cayo (Be Slippery as an Eel). Deceiving similar in format to Rodriguez’ Caiingat Cayo, the people were readily misled into getting not a copy o Rodriguez’ piece but Del Pillar’s. The Noli Me Tangere found another staunch defender in the person of a Catholic theologian of the Manila Cathedral, in Father Vicente Garcia. Under the pen-name Justo Desiderio Magalang. Father Garcia wrote a very scholarly defense of the Noli, claiming among other things that Rizal cannot be an ignorant man, being the product of Spanish officials and corrupt friars; he himself who had warned the people of committing mortal sin if they read the novel had therefore committed such sin for he has read the novel. Consequently, realizing how much the Noli had awakened his countrymen, to the point of defending his novel, Rizal said: Now I die content. Fittingly, Rizal found it a timely and effective gesture to dedicate his novel to the country of his people whose experiences and sufferings he wrote about, sufferings which he brought to light in an effort to awaken his countrymen to the truths that had long remained unspoken, although not totally unheard of. 5. Out of the Country†¦Again. On February 28, 1888, a year after the publication of Noli Me Tangere, and six months after his arrival in the Philippines, Jose Rizal sailed from Manila again, by advice of the government. The letters he wrote back home show how his heart ached at going, yet his judgment told him that it was best for him to go. The phenomenal effect of Noli Me Tangere made it clear that Rizal could wield a mighty influence through his pen, but to write the truth he would have to go to some country where he would be free from spies or plots. The spot he chose was the Library of the British Museum, the greatest library in the world.

Why 0% Unemployment Isnt Actually a Good Thing

Why 0% Unemployment Isnt Actually a Good Thing While on the surface it appears that a 0% unemployment rate would be terrific for the citizens of a country, having a small amount of unemployment is actually desirable. To understand why  we need to look at the three types (or causes) of unemployment. 3 Types of Unemployment Cyclical Unemployment is defined as occurring when the unemployment rate moves in the opposite direction as the GDP growth rate. So when GDP growth is small (or negative) unemployment is high. When the economy goes into recession and workers are laid off, we have cyclical unemployment.Frictional Unemployment: The Economics Glossary defines frictional unemployment as unemployment that comes from people moving between jobs, careers, and locations. If a person quits his job as an economics researcher to try and find a job in the music industry, we would consider this to be frictional unemployment.Structural Unemployment: The glossary defines structural unemployment as unemployment that comes from there being an absence of demand for the workers that are available. Structural unemployment is often due to technological change. If the introduction of DVD players cause the sales of VCRs to plummet, many of the people who manufacture VCRs will suddenly be out of work. By looking at these three types of unemployment, we can see why having some unemployment is a good thing. Why Some Unemployment Is a Good Thing Most people would argue that since cyclical unemployment is the by-product of a weak economy, it is necessarily a bad thing, though some have argued that recessions are good for the economy.   What about frictional unemployment? Lets go back to our friend who quit his job in economic research to pursue his dreams in the music industry. He quit a job he disliked to attempt a career at the music industry, even though it caused him to be unemployed for a short while. Or consider the case of a person who is tired of living in Flint and decides to make it big in Hollywood and who arrives in Tinseltown without a job. A great deal of frictional unemployment comes from people following their hearts and their dreams. This is certainly a positive type of unemployment, though we would hope for these individuals sakes that they do not stay unemployed for too long. Finally, structural unemployment. When the car became commonplace, it cost a lot of buggy manufacturers their jobs. At the same time, most would argue that the automobile, on net, was a positive development. The only way we could ever eliminate all structural unemployment is by eliminating all technological advancement. By breaking down the three types of unemployment into cyclical unemployment, frictional unemployment, and structural unemployment, we see that an unemployment rate of 0% is not a positive thing. A positive rate of unemployment is the price we pay for technological development and for people chasing their dreams.

Drop Down List Inside a DBGrid

Drop Down List Inside a DBGrid Heres how to place a drop-down pick list into a DBGrid. Create visually more attractive user interfaces for editing lookup fields inside a DBGrid - using the PickList property of a DBGrid column. Now, that you know what are  lookup fields, and what are the options of displaying a lookup field in Delphis DBGrid, its time to see how to use the PickList property of a DGBrid column to enable a user to pick a value for a lookup field from a drop-down list box. A Quick Info on DBGrid Columns Property A DBGrid control has a Columns property - a collection of TColumn objects representing all of the columns in a grid control. Columns can be set at design time through the Columns editor, or programmatically at runtime. Youll usually add Columns to a DBGird when you want to define how a column appears, how the data in the column is displayed and to access the properties, events, and methods of TDBGridColumns at runtime. A customized grid enables you to configure multiple columns to present different views of the same dataset (different column orders, different field choices, and different column colors and fonts, for example). Now, each Column in a grid is linked to a field from a dataset displayed in the grid. Whats more, each column has a PickList property. The PickList property lists values that the user can select for the columns linked field value. Filling the PickList What you will learn here is how to fill that String List with values from another dataset at run time.Recall, that we are editing the Articles table and that a Subject field can only accept values from the Subjects table: the ideal situation for the PickList! Heres how to set up the PickList property. First, we add a call to the SetupGridPickList procedure in the Forms OnCreate event handler. procedure TForm1.FormCreate(Sender: TObject);begin SetupGridPickList(Subject, SELECT Name FROM Subjects);end; The easiest way to create the SetupGridPickList procedure is to go to the private part of the form declaration, add the declaration there and hit the CTRL SHIFT C key combination - Delphis  code completion  will do the rest: ...type TForm1 class(TForm)... privateprocedure SetupGridPickList( const FieldName : string; const sql : string); public... Note: the SetupGridPickList procedure takes two parameters. The first parameter, FieldName, is the name of the field we want to act like a lookup field; the second parameter, SQL, is the SQL expression we use to populate the PickList with possible values - in general, the SQL expression should return a dataset with only one field. Heres how the SetupGridPickList looks like: procedure TForm1.SetupGridPickList(const FieldName, sql: string);var slPickList:TStringList; Query : TADOQuery; i : integer;begin slPickList:TStringList.Create; Query : TADOQuery.Create(self); try Query.Connection : ADOConnection1; Query.SQL.Text : sql; Query.Open; //Fill the string listwhile not Query.EOF dobegin slPickList.Add(Query.Fields[0].AsString); Query.Next; end; //while //place the list it the correct columnfor i:0 to DBGrid1.Columns.Count-1 do if DBGrid1.Columns[i].FieldName FieldName thenbegin DBGrid1.Columns[i].PickList:slPickList; Break; end; finally slPickList.Free; Query.Free; end; end; (*SetupGridPickList*) Thats it. Now, when you click the Subject column (to enter into edit mode). Note 1: by default, the drop-down list displays 7 values. You can change the length of this list by setting the DropDownRows property. Note 2: nothing stops you from filling up the PickList from a list of values not coming from a database table. If, for example, you have a field that only accepts weekday names (Monday, ..., Sunday) you can build a hard-coded PickList. Uh, I need to click the PickList 4 times... Note that when you want to edit the field displaying a drop-down list, youll need to click the cell 4 times in order to actually pick a value from a list. The next code snippet, added to the DBGrids OnCellClick event handler, mimics a hit to the F2 key followed by Alt DownArrow. procedure TForm1.DBGrid1CellClick(Column: TColumn);begin//Making the drop-down pick list appear fasterif Column.PickList.Count 0 thenbegin keybd_event(VK_F2,0,0,0); keybd_event(VK_F2,0,KEYEVENTF_KEYUP,0); keybd_event(VK_MENU,0,0,0); keybd_event(VK_DOWN,0,0,0); keybd_event(VK_DOWN,0,KEYEVENTF_KEYUP,0); keybd_event(VK_MENU,0,KEYEVENTF_KEYUP,0); end;end;

Influence of Hollywood Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Influence of Hollywood - Research Paper Example as the Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission got together to conduct a thorough study of how â€Å"entertainment firms market violence to children† (Cain, p1, 1999). But more importantly, it is an unequivocal acknowledgement of the negative influence of Hollywood on society in general and teenage boys in particular. Violence and anti-social behavior shown in Hollywood movies had even united the usually bipolar American polity, as both Republicans and Democrats hoped to â€Å"hold Hollywood accountable for its gratuitous violence in movies, television shows, video games and recordings†. (Cain, p1, 1999) Douglas Lowenstein, former head of the Interactive Digital Software Association put the core issue succinctly, when he said â€Å"What kind of values are we promoting when a child can walk into a store and find video games where you win based on how many people you can kill or how many places you can blow up? The nation should not lose sight of the fact that parents, not kids, buy most games. And therefore, keeping games not appropriate for children out of their hands starts and ends at home". (Cain, p1, 1999) Hence, while Hollywood is the instigator of this unsavory tendency among teenage boys, skillful parenting can keep a check on their children. The concerns raised by the country’s leaders are not without merit. For example, several studies have shown a positive correlation between violent programs (including movies, television and digital media) and violent behavior among children. Furthermore, â€Å"children under the age of 18 were the victims in nearly 20 percent of the violent crimes committed by criminals now in state prison, and that more than half of the juvenile victims were 12 or younger† (Smith,, 2001, p.321). Children who come from a dysfunctional family environment or have been abused physically or sexually are particularly prone to be affected. The gravity of the situation can be learnt from the fact that the Office of Juvenile

Marketing In the New Age of Information Technology Essay

Marketing In the New Age of Information Technology - Essay Example The total concept of marketing - branding and promotion, customer segmentation and product positioning has become a totally different ball game in the new technology scenario. As an example of the change, in 2004, six out of the 10 hotel web-site hits came through the use of an online search engine; this makes search engine optimization and pay-per-click advertising key to the successful marketing of a hotel (FHRAI). "Increasing occupancy rates and revenue by improving customer experience is the aim of modern hospitality organizations. To achieve these results, hotel managers need to have a deep knowledge of customers' needs, behaviour, and preferences and be aware of the ways in which the services delivered create value for the customers and then stimulate their retention and loyalty" (Minghetti, 2003). Almost every organization is considering customer relationship management (CRM) as the new paradigm in marketing, where the customer, and not the process, is at the heart of the marketing initiative (Grnroos, 1994). However, a more fundamental question that needs to be answered is: to what extent are developments within Information and Communications Technology (ICT) changing how marketing is or can be done This paper attempts to answer this question. T The customer needs the service or product to be provided on time, appropriately and at a fair price; the traditional 4P's (McCarthy, 1978). While information technology is of tremendous use has placed capability in the hands of the marketer it has also given marvelous tools to the customers through which they can evaluate the products available, compare features and price and make a decision that is purely individual and difficult to influence by traditional methods. The first priority, then, obviously is to be on the information grid (Internet) and look for ways to improve customer value through a competitive edge. The market segmentation has thus come down to a 'segment of one' and the emergence of one-to-one marketing strategies (Berry, 1994). But is this all Is it enough to be an effective marketing organization Understanding the customer and the best way to communicate and build profit is at the heart of all marketing efforts. Enhanced customer satisfaction and retention lead to increased customer loyalty, occupancy rates and revenue per available customer (Dub & Renaghan, 1999a, 1999b). "Managing customer value by creating quality and service that customers can see now is considered a critical component of companies' strategic marketing. Customer value is what builds loyalty" (ibid, p. 79). However, most hotels use information technology only for administrative purposes and have not realised the full possibilities for generating customer value (Minghetti, 2003). The effects of ICT on marketing are not only potentially dramatic they can be catastrophic to managers who choose to ignore the new technology. Marketing is increasingly becoming reliant on understanding and knowing about new concepts and skills that have become essential to stay ahead in the modern marketplace - or marketspace! The customer expects to be able to access a virtual audio-visual tour that give them the complete feel of the facility before deciding where to holiday. Face-to-face marketing, using ICT to provide

Business Ratio Essay Example for Free

Business Ratio Essay The profit margin is mostly used for internal comparison. Individual businesses operating and financing arrangements vary so much that different entities are bound to have different levels of expenditure, so that comparison of one with another can have little meaning. Digi has a highest net profit margin ratio among the 3 company which is 21.03%, while Axiata and YTL have 14.26% and 7.87%. YTL with a lowest profit margin indicates a low margin of safety: higher risk that a decline in sales will erase profits and result in a net loss. Profit margin is an indicator of a companys pricing strategies and how well it controls costs. Differences in competitive strategy and product mix cause the profit margin to vary among different companies. Liquidity ratio (current ratio) The current ratio is an indication of a firms market liquidity and ability to meet creditors demands. Acceptable current ratios vary from industry to industry and are generally between 1.5 and 3 for healthy businesses. Axiata and YTL have a current ratio that is 1.1632 and 1.3149 is near to this range, it generally indicates moderate short-term financial strength. Digi has a current ratio that below 1, the current liabilities exceed current assets. Digi may have problems meeting its short-term obligations. Low values for the current ratios indicate that Digi may have difficulty meeting current obligations. But if inventory turns over much more rapidly than the accounts payable become due, then the current ratio will be less than one. This can allow Digi to operate with a low current ratio. Leverage ratio (Debt ratio) YTL debt ratio is 0.7403 which is higher than Axiata and Digi which is 0.4826 and 0.7098. The higher the ratio means the greater risk will be associated with the firms operation. In addition, high debt to assets ratio may indicate low borrowing capacity of a firm, which in turn will lower the firms financial flexibility. The debt ratio shows the proportion of a companys assets which are financed through debt. The ratio of Axiata is less than 0.5, most of the companys assets are financed through equity. Companies with high debt ratios are said to be highly leveraged, not highly liquid as stated above. Digi and YTL with a high debt ratio could be in danger if creditors start to demand repayment of debt. Activity Ratio (Total assets turn over) Asset turnover is a financial ratio that measures the efficiency of a companys use of its assets in generating sales revenue or sales income to the company. Companies with low profit margins tend to have high asset turnover, while those with high profit margins have low asset turnover. Digi has a profit margins which is 1.193times is much higher than Axiata and YTL, 0.4182times and 0.3892times. These show that Digi has a high asset turnover while Axiata and YTL have low asset turnover. Companies in the retail industry tend to have a very high turnover ratio due mainly to cutthroat and competitive pricing. Market Ratio (Earnings per Share ratio) Earnings per share are the amount of earnings per each outstanding share of a companys stock. In the United States, the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) requires companies income statements to report EPS for each of the major categories of the income statement: continuing operations, discontinued operations, extraordinary items, and net income. Axita has the highest market ratio which is 28sen out of every ordinary share. Digi and YTL have lower market ratio, 16.1sen and 11.53sen. Compare with Digi and YTL, Axiata has the highest market value. Axiata earn 28sen out of every ordinary share. Days Sales Outstanding (DSO) Ratio Day sales outstanding are a calculation used by a company to estimate their average collection period. It is a financial ratio that illustrates how well a companys accounts receivables are being managed. The day’s sales outstanding analysis provides general information about the number of days on average that customers take to pay invoices. YTL has higher DSO ratio, 72.72days can indicate a customer base with credit problems and is deficient in its collections activity. Digi and Axiata which have a lower ratio, 27.96days and 46.74days may indicate that firms credit policy is too rigorous, which may be hampering sales.

Internet Privacy :: Essays Papers

Internet Privacy The e-commerce merchant (Tanaka, 1999). Table 1 illustrates some types of information collected by websites. Table 1 Personal Information Collected Type of Information Number of Sites1 Percent1 Personal Identifying 335 92.8% Demographic 205 56.8% Personal Identifying Only 132 36.6% Demographic Only 2 .6% Both Personal Identifying & Demographic 203 56.2% None 24 6.6% 1 Number and Percentage from base of 361 surveyed websites. Source: Georgetown Internet Privacy Policy Survey: Report to Federal Trade Commission June 1999 The consumer may feel a name or address is a small price for the item or piece of information they will receive. Usually, the consumer does not understand or take the time to find out the use of the information after placement in the websites’ database. This electronic data gathering on consumers using the Internet by e-businesses creates the demand.

Rhetorical Analysis Stev Jobs Commencemnent Speech Essay

Throughout this speech, Steve Jobs successfully convinces the multicultural graduate population at the Stanford University Commencement to be preeminent in life and to pursue their passions by relaying three personal stories in a symmetrical structure that enables pathos to be clearly developed. In most of today’s arguments, facts are given to support a claim that is being made by someone; however, in Steve Jobs’ speech, he presents only his personal opinion and a little a bit of history as evidence. Even though this is all he has to offer to his audience, it creates rhetorical backing in his ethos. Through his stories, he creates a persona for himself. He makes himself seem like a person who carried on even in his darkest of times and also someone who had overcome the many obstacles he faced and when things did not look so dandy. While trying to teach the audience that failure can sometimes be right, these are important pieces of the persona that he will establish throughout his speech. He is known as a successful man and role model to many people in the world. While he develops this persona, it allows him to make a connection with his audience on a level way beyond what he expects. Jobs breaks it down into stories, but what he really wants the audience to see is that his life went okay, and then things took a wrong turn, and then everything began to brighten up and get a lot better. Things were better than he ever would have imagined. Throughout his speech, the ups and downs are repeated patterns that he conveys in his stories and also in his life. â€Å"I’ve never graduated from college. Truth be told; this is the closest I’ve ever gotten to a college graduation,† is what Steve Jobs confesses immediately after he begins his speech to the graduating class of Stanford University. You would think that for a college graduation commencement, you would want someone who could relate educationally to the audience to send the graduates off, but on this day Steve Jobs was not that person. He did not fit the norm of being a college graduate. After he makes a statement on how he never actually graduated from college, he strongly compliments his audience, telling them how honored he is to be able to give this speech to â€Å"one of the finest universities in the world.† He reels the audience in by telling them that he never graduated college which gives the graduates a sense of accomplishment. Jobs’ however, only completed six months of school at Reed’s College. Before this time, he was very unsure if furthering his  college career would better his future in any way. But coincidentally, he decided to stick around and take classes that he thought were interesting for another eighteen months. Throughout his speech, he shares his difference experiences with the audience, and they all seem to share a very common theme. This theme being; the pursuit of happiness. Jobs effectively connects with the audience by saying this and using pathos. He communicates this message by using cause and effect analysis, contrast, and personal anecdotes. In his first short story, Steve Jobs tells the audience â€Å"Again, you cannot connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards.† In this story, Jobs does a magnificent job when using his rhetorical methods. He uses anaphora, pathos, and apostrophe by repeating the phrase â€Å"connecting the dots† throughout his story. He elicits pathos from the audience when he discusses his childhood and being adopted. This technique he uses gives the story a great meaning, and it also allows the audience to defer meaningful application. Even though his biological parents could not provide for him and raise him the way they wanted to on their own, they did however find a well-educated family that could provide for him, so that he would be an educated young man. He tells them how seventeen years later he makes the decision to go to college, then humorously says how he felt that he wasted all of his parents’ savings just to be in school for such a s hort time. His inclusion of such an emotional and impecunious background as a child born to a young woman out-of-wedlock, shows that even the most underprivileged students’ lives can reach success. He ends his story by giving the graduates a piece of advice that transitioned perfectly with the next story he tells. â€Å"So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something. Your gut, destiny, life, and karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.† â€Å"I didn’t have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends’ rooms, I returned coke bottles for the five-cent deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the seven miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna Temple,† Jobs explains to his audience. Here he gets into the â€Å"lows of life† and how it wasn’t all ‘peaches and cream’  for him when he dropped out. The personal experiences in his speech help to create and develop his individuality. He uses pathos to get the audience to understand he had nowhere to sleep, barely had food and money, and only got one good meal a week. I am sure to the audience; it may have seemed somewhat strange and out of the ordinary for him to be mentioning such a stage in his life that would that would imply he lived the life of a vagabond. That is how Jobs would pull in the audience by telling such a touching story. It just shows that even the most success ful people could come from the slums and become something just by living out their dreams. As Jobs gets further along into his speech he starts off a sentence saying, â€Å"If I never dropped in on that single course in college, the ‘Mac’ would never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts†¦.If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on that calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do.† Jobs talks to his audience about how at this time in his life, he still really never had an idea about how the things he had learned would â€Å"factor† into his life. Here he uses logos as inductive reasoning. While being in the calligraphy classes, Jobs talks about the different types of fonts that he learned about and also how he learned the history behind them as well. He uses the â€Å"Rule of 3† as his rhetoric device here. â€Å"I learned about serif and sans-serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes g reat typography great† (Jobs). With emotions and I’m sure a heavy heart, Jobs says to the graduates â€Å"I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down – that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me.† Here, Job evokes pathos and ethos from the audience. He uses pathos when explaining how he and a friend of his took this ‘garage project’ and transformed it into a two billion dollar company â€Å"†¦.that now has 4,000 people working for it.† He appeals to the audiences emotions when he tells them about his fall from his very own business and the Apple Board of Director’s grace. After the release of the first Macintosh, he was fired from his company because his position as the CEO of Apple was terminated, and he tells how devastated he was by this. â€Å"The focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating† (Jobs). He states his beliefs in such a blunt manner that everyone in attendance of this commencement is confident to understand and relate to what he went through and felt. â€Å"The heart knows where to go and what to do† is what he tells these Stanford graduates and the most important thing he needed his audience to do was to follow their intuition and their feelings. â€Å"..Turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me† (Jobs). In the next five years after he was fired from his company Apple, his creative thoughts began to conjure and he started two new companies; NeXT and Pixar. Pixar became one of the most world renowned animation studios. But he did not stop there, after creating Pixar he created the first animation movie ‘Toy Story.’ This movie is a widely known success amongst many ages and generations of children and adults today. Also during this time he met the love of his life, â€Å"†¦I fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife†¦Ã¢â‚¬ Ã¢â‚¬â€œ â€Å"Laurene and I have a beautiful family together†¦Ã¢â‚¬  (Jobs). He yet again uses pathos with the audience to show how even though he was going through a bad time in his life, he still was able to find his true love, and I am sure by them finding each other, this pushed him to do greater things. Ironically, Apple bought NeXT, and it is ‘the heart of Apple’s current renaissance.’ Steve Jobs ends this short story with yet another inspirational quote for his audience. He tells them â€Å"Sometimes life’s going to hit you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith. I’m convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You’ve got to find what you love.† His success shows that the adversity makes the students and himself better and stronger than anything that they will ever face. Jobs’ description of his journey after being fired makes him an example of hard work as a precursor to success. â€Å"My third story is about death.† The phrase is short, simple, elegant, and quite frankly to the point. It shows his form of this story. His short and simple way of speaking portrays honesty and builds the logos of his commencement. By making this simple statement to his audience â€Å"About a y ear ago I was diagnosed with cancer†¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦this was certainly a type of cancer that is incurable,† Jobs makes a personal and emotional connection with his audience. Seeing that there are possibly some audience members who have gone through the same thing as he or have experienced the same thing with someone else. Here, Jobs’ is using pathos to tap into the audience’s feelings of  sympathy. He then develops his ethos with the audience and then explains that he has faced adversity in the form of sickness as well as other things. He comes off as a strong man who has conquered his challenges. This was proof of his strength and what he endured. â€Å"Your time is limited so don’t waste it living someone else’s life.† Jobs uses his near death experience story as a way to inform the Stanford graduates that life is too short. He uses pathos here as well when he is talking about the audience following their hearts. â€Å"Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know how to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.† Jobs is stating that the consequences of these many graduates not living to the best of their ability after graduation, are much greater than if they did when following their real passions. â€Å"Even people who want to go to heaven do not want to die in order to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share.† Here it shows Jobs’ philosophical take on death. Having experienced such a traumatic thing in his life it recreated his personal status on it. Being diagnosed with cancer and seeing his life change right before his eyes made him change the life around him. He made the best of his time, and now he is telling the graduates to do the same thing. He uses very candidly and sagacious words to show his audience (the graduates) that eventually they will die so now is the time to ‘live it up and live it to the fullest’ with the time that they have left. The most important decision Jobs tells them they can make right now is to find whatever it is they love and to pursue it to the best of their ability whenever the time comes to do so. If the graduates follow their passions and do what their heart and mind lead them to do, their lives will be very sufficient and excellent in every way possible. By making these statements to his audience, he acquires warrant. Warrant is the rhetorical device that makes his speech such an advantageous one. The relationship he creates between his audience and himself is a parallel experience. Through his straightforward statements, words, and visible proof he encourages the audience of graduates that su ccess is attainable when you follow your passions and desires. They have to live without regrets. â€Å"Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish† (Jobs). Jobs’ defines his hardship when he relates to that quote. Here he yet again uses pathos of a childhood memory of a quote in a magazine to connect with his audience. This  is the last thing that Jobs wants to leave with the graduates as he comes to a close in his commencement speech. He explains to them about a magazine that he use to read as a child. As he describes it â€Å"When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the ‘bibles’ of my generation.† Jobs begins to tell them the meaning that this magazine and quote was to him, he explicitly tells them about the last issue they ever made and the impact it would stamp on him for the rest of his life. Here he gives them a mental visual of the last issue. He goes into detail about how the picture on the back of the magazine â€Å"had an early country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous† (Jobs). Beneath it read the words: â€Å"Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.† He gives this sense of ethos when he describes this to them. Jobs masterfully directs his audience’s minds to always be curious and to stay more importantly humble, so they will follow their hearts and love the life that is ahead of them. Steve Jobs’ Commencement Speech at Stanford University is considered a very effective speech because of his use of the rhetorical devices. He uses many of them such as pathos, ethos, logos, apostrophe, and many others. His use of rhetorical approaches is not the one and only thing that makes his speech one of the most successful ones. Jobs was able to relate successfully to the audience and was also able to relax them with his humor and laid-back grace and comments about his very own personal stories and life. By the end of the speech, Jobs connected very well with his audience, and they also had a better appreciation for who Steve Jobs was and who Steve Jobs was still becoming. Jobs’ use of structural repetition and his connection of emotional anecdotes encourages the audience (Stanford Graduates) to pursue their dreams and passions. His methodology as an orator throughout the time he sets up his ethos, logos, and pathos of his advice are subtle. Jobs’ pathos adds to this heart-wrenching rhetoric. In addition, he also uses his three emotionally charged stories to show his high character and qualified eligibility to be giving the graduates advice about their lives and how they should never second guess anything that they do. The words he chooses are just elegant and simple and portray honesty, as well as intellectualism. But most importantly Jobs leaves these many graduates off with these short, simple and encouraging words. â€Å"Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.† Works Cited Jobs, Steve. â€Å"Commencement Address at Stanford University.† Graduation. Stanford University Auditorium, Palo Alto. 12 June 2005. Speech.

Review Low Back Pain Treatment Health And Social Care Essay

In publically provided health care systems, limited resources coupled with limitless demands result in determinations holding to be made about the efficient allotment of scarce resources. This rationing of the services raises inquiries of how services should be provided ( for illustration, how should patients with alone wellness conditions such as nephritic failure/cancer be treated? Should centralised clinics with increased expertness, but increased travel clip for patients, be introduced? ) . Should we prioritize certain wellness conditions more than others based on quality added life old ages? Given the deficiency of a market for wellness attention ( Free wellness attention in UK ) , economic rating techniques try to inform such determinations. This essay aims to critically research the Outcome rating techniques such as QALY ‘s, Contingent Valuation ( Willingness to pay ) and distinct pick experiment for the intervention of Low back hurting and dementedness.Low Back hurting & A ; Dementia:Low back hurting is a common ailment and although non dangerous, it causes great uncomfortableness and has significant economical impact. In Netherlands, the entire costs of low back hurting have been estimated at 1.7 % of the Gross National Product. It has been estimated that the costs of production losingss account for approximately 84 % to 96 % of the entire costs for low back hurting in Western societies. In the UK, an estimated 16 % of the grownup population consult their general practician for aid with back hurting in a 12-month period. The one-year cost of lower dorsum hurting to the NHS has been estimated at approx ?480 million and the load of lower dorsum hurting is estimated at over approx ?10 billion per twelvemonth in foo tings of lost productiveness and illness benefits. The major societal and economic loss due to moo back hurting indicates the demand to find the most cost-efficient intercession for these patients. Low back hurting is a slackly coined term as it encompasses multiple and complex conditions which requires a varied direction attack. The direction of the status is based on its anatomy, physiology and continuance of the symptoms and hence the cost of handling it varies. Therefore accurate economic rating of low back hurting may be end far in front. However for the intents of this essay Low back hurting is dealt as one status for economic rating techniques. â€Å" Dementia is a progressive and mostly irreversible clinical syndrome that is characterised by a widespread damage of mental map † ( NICE 2006 ) . Although many people with dementedness retain positive personality traits and personal properties, as their status progresses they can see some or all of the undermentioned: memory loss, linguistic communication damage, freak out, alterations in personality, troubles with activities of day-to-day life, self-neglect, psychiatric symptoms ( for illustration, apathy, depression or psychosis ) and out-of-character behavior ( for illustration, aggression, sleep perturbation. Dementia is associated with complex demands and, particularly in the ulterior phases, high degrees of dependence and morbidity. This attention needs frequently challenge the accomplishments and capacity of carers and services. As the status progresses, people with dementedness can show carers and societal attention staff with complex jobs including aggressive behavior, restlessness and roving, eating jobs, incontinency, psychotic beliefs and hallucinations, and mobility troubles that can take to falls and breaks. The impact of dementedness on an person may be compounded by personal fortunes such as alterations in fiscal position and adjustment, or mourning. These two conditions are distinguishable in nature as the affected age groups vary between these two conditions and hence the economic impact on society. Furthermore direction of dementedness involves an integrated attention between wellness and societal systems.Quality Adjusted Life Year ‘s ( QALY ‘s ) :â€Å" A quality-adjusted life-year ( QALY ) takes into history both the measure and quality of life generated by healthcare intercessions. It is the arithmetic merchandise of life anticipation and a step of the quality of the staying life-years. â€Å" ( NICE, 2008 ) A QALY places a weight on clip in different wellness provinces. A twelvemonth of perfect wellness is deserving 1 and a twelvemonth of less than perfect wellness is worth less than 1. Death is considered to be tantamount to 0 ; nevertheless, some wellness provinces may be considered worse than decease and have negative tonss. QALYs provide a common currency to measure the extent of the benefits gained from a assortment of intercessions in footings of wellness related quality of life and endurance for the patient. When combined with the costs of supplying the intercessions, cost-utility ratios result ; these indicate the extra costs required to bring forth a twelvemonth of perfect wellness ( one QALY ) . Comparisons can be made between intercessions, and precedences can be established based on those intercessions that are comparatively cheap ( low cost per QALY ) and those that are comparatively expensive ( high cost per QALY ) . However, the usage of QALYs in resource allotment determinations does intend that picks between patient groups viing for medical attention are made expressed and commissioners are given an penetration into the likely benefits from puting in new engineerings and therapies. While QALYs provide an indicant of the benefits gained from a assortment of intervention processs, in footings of quality of life and endurance for patients, they are far from perfect as a step of result ( NICE, 2008 ) . For illustration, the usage of QALYs as a individual result step for economic rating means that of import wellness effects are excluded. QALYs besides suffer from a deficiency of sensitiveness when comparing the efficaciousness of two viing but similar drugs and in the intervention of less terrible wellness jobs. Chronic diseases, where quality of life is a major issue and survival less of an issue, are hard to suit in the QALY context, and there is a inclination to fall back to the usage of disease-specific steps of quality of life ( Philips, 2009 ) Similarly, preventative steps, where the impact on wellness results may non happen for many old ages, may be hard to quantify utilizing QALYs because the importance attached to each of the wellness dimensions is extremel y dependent on age, life context and life duties. For illustration, it is really hard to compare the wellness position of a possible title-holder who suffers a hamstring pang in the warm-up session with that of an aged individual who has been restored to some step of mobility as a consequence of an intercession. Further unfavorable judgments have surrounded the unequal weight attached to emotional and mental wellness jobs, and the deficiency of consideration of the impact of wellness jobs on the quality of life of carers and other household members, while much argument environments who should be involved in puting values on wellness provinces ( Nord et al 1999 ) . Discussion has besides focused on how much society should be prepared to pay for a QALY. While there is a grade of consensus that it should by and large be between ?20,000 and ?30,000, considerable argument has arisen in relation to, for illustration, interventions used at the terminal of life or for ultra-orphan condition s, where higher thresholds have been advocated and used. However, the usage of QALYs in resource allotment determinations does intend that picks between patient groups viing for medical attention are made expressed. Commissioners are progressively faced with resource restraints and have to prioritize their outgo against an ceaseless flow of new engineerings and therapies that all claim to heighten the wellness position of peculiar patient groups. QALYs and cost-utility analysis provide extra information for decision-makers as they grapple with turn toing the healthcare quandary of where to apportion resources to bring forth the maximal wellness benefits for their communities and society as a whole ( Philips 2009 ) . Although the usage of QALYs is backed by a strong research docket, of import methodological issues still remain to be resolved. For illustration, different rating techniques give rise to incompatibilities in public-service corporation values for similar wellness provinces, doing serious dependability jobs. Another good known but unsolved issue concerns the difference between the public-service corporation of a wellness province expected by healthy individuals and the public-service corporation of this wellness province really experienced by patients, frequently confounded by version to disablement and disease. This raises farther concerns about the content cogency of derived QALYs.Low back Pain- QALY ‘s as Outcome Measure:Management of Low back pain chiefly constitutes of Physiotherapy, Osteopath, stylostixis and other curative modes with lesser medical/surgical intercessions. This displacement of direction attack has added benefit in economic footings. A assortment of these in tercessions are available for low back hurting but the effectivity for most intercessions has non yet been assessed. Recent literature indicates that exercising therapy, behavioral therapy, and back school plans are the most promising intercessions. Several cost-effectiveness analyses of exercising therapy was performed. However, the analyses were hard to compare due to heterogeneousness in the survey population and therapies to which the intercessions were compared. Goossens et Al, 1998 found no statistically important differences in cost effectivity between behavioral therapies. A cost-effectiveness survey of back schools showed that a low strength back school was more cost effectual than usual attention and a high strength back school. Two surveies found a important decrease in absenteeism for a ranked activity plan in occupational wellness attention. Van Der Roer et Al, 2008 studies the consequences of an economic rating performed alongside a randomized controlled test comparing an intensive group developing protocol to physiotherapy guideline attention. They studied the cost effectivity of an intensive group developing protocol versus guideline physical therapy in patients with nonspecific chronic low back hurting. The direct wellness attention costs were significantly higher for patients in the protocol group, due to the comparatively high costs of the protocol itself. No important differences were found for functional position, hurting strength, general perceived consequence, and quality of life. As there were no important differences in entire costs, they concluded that the intensive group developing protocol was non cost effectual compared with guideline physical therapy. A restriction of this survey is the limited figure of patients who participated in the test. Particularly for observing relevant differences in costs, big Numberss of patients are required, because cost informations have a typically skewed distribution. A matter-of-fact survey by Duncan et Al, 2007 compared the effectivity and cost-effectiveness of three sorts of physical therapy normally used to cut down disablement in chronic low back hurting. This survey used QALY as one of the result step to inform the economic benefits of these intercessions. Economic analysis is still unusual in rehabilitation surveies ; yet in this test, it reveals of import differences between intercessions that are non evident from clinical result steps. Promoting self-help is an of import purpose in back hurting direction and economic analysis is a agency of quantifying how successfully this has been achieved. Because low back hurting has such high societal and wellness service costs, including an economic analysis in future rehabilitation tests helps policy-makers to make up one's mind how to pass limited health care resources. This highlights the benefits of usage of QALY ‘s in Low Back hurting surveies.QALY ‘s in Dementia:Using QALY ‘s as an economic rating tool for measuring dementedness has invited immense unfavorable judgments by medical opposite numbers every bit good as the pharmacological medicine industry. One of the statements is that Dementia is a multifaceted job which spans across wellness and societal attention and QALY ‘s are non sensitive plenty to pick up these issues. The value set by NICE for per QALY twelvemonth is non sufficient in dementedness as primary intervention involves drug intervention and value added life for a aged individual is non reflected good plenty utilizing a QALY. Furthermore, the effort to utilize a individual QALY criterion on all patients has non been without contention. The recent determination by the National Institute for Clinical Excellence ( NICE ) , to curtail usage of Alzheimer ‘s disease ( AD ) drugs in all but the most earnestly sick patients, those with advanced phases of the disease, was met with a whirlpool of unfavorable judgment by patient protago nism groups, doctors, and industry administrations. The controversial NICE determination was based on the judgement that the four available AD drugs ( donepezil, rivastigmine, galantamine, and memantine ) were non â€Å" cost-efficient † ( NICE 2006 ) . Due to this complex wellness and societal attention impact caused by dementedness the result rating utilizing QALY ‘s does non reflect the existent demand whereas a WTP and Discrete pick experiment might be an more appropriate tool. Furthermore QALY ‘s does non measure the impact of the wellness status on the carers and relations which will be the instance with dementedness whereas a WTP or a DCE will take this into history.Discrete Choice Experiment ( DCE ) :Discrete pick experiments are an property based step of benefit that is based on the premises that foremost, healthcare intercessions, services, or policies can be described by their features ( or attributes ) and secondly, an person ‘s rating depends on the degrees of these features ( Ryan et al 1997 ) . Discrete pick experiments were introduced into wellness economic sciences as a technique to travel beyond the quality adjusted life twelvemonth ( QALY ) paradigm. Users were concerned with many facets of wellness attention beyond wellness results. Such factors included waiting clip, location of intervention, type of attention ( for illustration, surgical or medical ) , and staff supplying attention ( adviser or specializer nurse ) and were referred to as procedure properties. Discrete pick experiments allow probe of the tradeoffs between such procedure and wellness results attributes ( Ryan et al 2003 ) . Applications of distinct pick experiments have been extended to see supplier penchants such as strength of infirmary advisers ‘ penchants for assorted facets of their work. More late the technique has been used to value wellness results in the proviso of attention ( frequently beyond those valued within the QALY ) . At the methodological degree, surveies find that respondents will finish distinct pick experiments in an internally valid and consistent mode ( Viney et al 2002 ) . An of import inquiry in the usage of any study technique is that of external validity-that is, do persons act in world as they province in a conjectural context? Although limited research has been conducted in this country and future research is clearly of import ( which is the instance for all economic rating techniques, including those used in the QALY model ) , experience from other countries such as the rating of environmental goods and services implies that we can be optimistic. Given the function of the NICE in doing recommendations refering optimum interventions, can it do usage of DCE? The institute is under increasing force per unit area to take history of patients ‘ penchants. To day of the month systematic consideration of such penchants has been limited. Typically public penchants are required to arouse quality weights in the QALY paradigm. This is non adequate since patients may value outcomes otherwise to the populace and have penchants over facets of attention beyond QALYs. NICE plans to hold a patient centred rating of engineerings in add-on to the current appraisals of clinical and cost effectivity. Using the attack of distinct pick experiments allows the integrating of patients ‘ values on all facets of attention in one step. We will be able to see how patients trade different wellness results every bit good as procedure type attributes, aboard each other. Evaluation of procedure and wellness results from the patients ‘ positio n may good take to decisions that struggle with the recommendations of the cost per QALY attack. This is more likely to be the instance in comparings of engineerings that differ with regard to outcomes beyond those measured in a QALY, every bit good as procedure properties. However DCE external cogency is problematic in wellness context as opposed to QALY. Hence in footings of dementedness DCE is a better attack to QALY and in instance of Low back hurting QALY is a better attack than DCE.Willingness to Pay ( WTP ) :Willingness to pay is the conjectural step where a person is willing to pay a pecuniary value for a intervention or merchandise and it can besides be expressed as the sum of trade off a individual is prepared to see for one intervention to another due to budgetary restraints. The suggestion is that wellness economic sciences lags behind other countries of economic sciences that have embraced these methods, in peculiar environmental economic sciences. Two chief methods hav e been employed in WTP: the ‘contingent rating method ‘ ( CVM ) and ‘choice experiments ‘ ( CE ) – the method once known as conjoint analysis. These methods have by and large been used to put a pecuniary value on a bundle of wellness and/or non-health benefits in the context of a specific intercession. Yet economic rating within the wellness attention field remains dominated by cost-effectiveness and cost-per-QALY analysis. Health attention remunerators have been loath to encompass cost-benefit analysis based on WTP methods ( Cookson, 2003 ) . And most wellness economic experts have preferred to polish the cost effectivity attack instead than to develop new WTP methods ( Cookson 2003 ) . Why is this? Advocates of WTP methods suggest it may be partially due to a common but erroneous perceptual experience that WTP surveies are ‘somehow supportive of policies aimed at taking the proviso of state-supplied wellness services ‘ ( Hanley et al 2003 ) . It may besides be due to the fact that stated penchant WTP methods suffer from two serious ( and perchance related ) measuring biases that render them unattractive to wellness attention determination shapers. First, WTP responses tend to be under sensitive – although non needfully wholly insensitive – to the magnitude of benefit ( Bateman et al 1997 ) . This includes both ‘scope effects ‘ , affecting different measures of the same good, and ‘nesting effects ‘ ( or 'embedding effects ‘ or ‘part-whole prejudice ‘ ) , affecting one good incorporated within a larger package of goods ( Bateman et al 1997 ) . Scope effects are peculiarly strong in relation to wellness hazards. Using high quality contingent rating study designs, and strict experimental methods, research workers have found that people tend to province a similar sum – approximately ?50 – for any given magnitude of decrease in the hazard of decease or hurt ( Beattie et al 1998 ) . This has the consequence of overstating implied pecuniary values for life and wellness for comparatively little hazard decreases. More by and large, under-sensitivity to the magnitude of benefit tends to blow up ratings of intercessions that yield comparatively little benefits. Second, WTP methods tend to blow up ratings of the specific intercession that respondents are asked about, comparative to intercessions that respondents are non asked about. Asking respondents to concentrate on one specific intercession in isolation Acts of the Apostless as a sort of amplifying glass for stated WTP, When asked to see an intercession in isolation, people are willing to pay amounts of money far in surplus of what they are willing to pay when asked to see the same intercession in relation to a scope of other intercessions. This is sometimes known as ‘budget restraint prejudice ‘ ( Mitchell et al 1989 ) . Unlike the rational economic adult male of standar d economic theory, study respondents may be unable to budget at the same time for the full scope of possible public and private goods and services they require. So valuing each point in isolation can take to sum sums of WTP in surplus of the available budget. WTP methods therefore tend to be biased in favor of ( 1 ) intercessions that deliver comparatively little benefits, and ( 2 ) the peculiar intercession being evaluated, as opposed to other 1s non being evaluated. These are serious defects in a wellness attention context, where the majority of economic rating activity is directed towards informing reimbursement determinations about dearly-won new wellness attention engineerings. These engineerings tend to offer incontrovertible but comparatively little wellness benefits. WTP methods take history of chance costs more exhaustively than cost-effectiveness analysis ( Oliver et al 2002 ) . Cost-effectiveness analysis takes history of chance costs utilizing an incremental cost-effectiveness threshold, which represents an expressed premise about the cost-effectiveness of a ‘typical ‘ alternate intercession. By contrast, WTP methods take history of chance costs by giving respondents the Willingness to pay and DCE in footings of Low back hurting is hard to quantify as it usually consequences in a conjectural value and QALY ‘s inform wellness related results in a better mode. However in instance of complex Low back pain a combination of these economic rating techniques will be more efficient instead than utilizing a QALY ‘s in isolation. With respects to dementia DCE and WTP tends to turn to the tradeoff every bit good as the Complex demands placed on the wellness and societal attention.DecisionEconomic rating techniques are important for the hereafter wellness attention resource allotment as rationing of these resources are acquiring harder due to fiscal restraints. Each of the economic rating techniques has its strengths and failings. However applied on the right context and in appropriate conditions makes it more efficient. Low back hurting and dementedness are alone wellness conditions with complex multifaceted jobs necessitating different economic rat ings to be efficient. However a combination of these techniques is important to turn to the inefficiencies of these techniques. Further research in these countries is indispensable to find the economic ratings of the wellness attention industry.

Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome essays

Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome essays Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) can be a result of two cy Virus types HIV-1 and HIV-2. A number of primate species carry similar viruses known as Simian Immunodeficiency Viruses, or SIV. Chimpanzees can carry a virus related to HIV-1, but sooty mangabeys, a type of monkey found in West Africa, can carry a virus similar to HIV-2. Humans are thought to have become infected with HIV-1 from sooty mangabeys. Baboons in Tanzania and patas monkeys in Senegal seem to have cross-infected each others species with SIVs. A local species of green monkey carries a virus called SIVAGM, which is related to the SIVs that the baboons and patas monkeys seem to have contracted. However, the odd thing about these baboons and patas monkeys is that they are not usually infected with SIVs. A subtype of HIV-1, called subtype B, was initially found in North America and in Europe, but it is hardly ever found in sub-Saharan Africa. Next, HIV is usually transmitted through four different ways. The first mode of transmission is through sexual contact; this is either vaginally or anally. The second mode of transmission is through contact with infected blood, usually through a blood transfusion or through an open wound on the skin. The third mode of transmission is through shared needles; this is usually from a drug user that is infected with HIV. The fourth mode of transmission is through breast-feeding, where HIV is passed from the mother to the baby. The percentages of these modes of transmission are as follows; 75% of HIV infection is from sexual activity, 10% is passed through breast-feeding, and 10% is passed through intravenous drug use. The other 5% are passed through contact with infected blood. As of June 1999, about one million people in the United States have HIV, and around 45,000 more people contract HIV every year. HIV does not kill a patient, what kills a patient is infections caused by different pathogens, which then leads ...

The 10 New SAT Changes and What They Mean for You

The 10 New SAT Changes and What They Mean for You SAT / ACT Prep Online Guides and Tips Times, they are a-changin’. Bob Dylan’s 1964 anthem of change may not have originally referred to a college admissions test, but it certainly applies to the SAT overhaul of 2016. The redesigned test features huge changes from its previous version, in terms of its structure, scoring, and content. Read on to learn about the major updates and what you can do to prepare for them. To start, let’s take a look at the test’s structure and exactly how it’s a-changin'. Changes in SAT Structure: Four Long Sections and Optional Essay Anyone familiar with the old SAT will immediately notice huge structural changes in the new test. While the old SAT had ten shorter sections, the new SAT has just four (or five with the optional essay). The old SAT’s subject order was largely random, but the new SAT’s order is predictable: first, Reading; second, Writing and Language; third, Math No Calculator; and fourth, Math with Calculator. Its Essay section is now optional, and you can choose to add it as a fifth section at the end. You can compare the structure of the old and new tests and see just how different they are in the charts below. Old SAT Structure The old SAT had ten sections. The first was always the essay, and the last was always a short Writing section. In between, though, you couldn't predict the order of Critical Reading, Writing, and Math. Students had different tests, so the person beside you might have been working on Math while you were skimming throughCritical Reading passages. Two of the Math sections were 25 minutes, and one was 20 minutes. Similarly, two of the Critical Reading sections were 25 minutes, and one was 20 minutes. As for Writing, you had a 25-minute essay, a 25-minute multiple choice, and a 10-minute multiple choice. Compared to the redesigned SAT, this old format seems prettyrandom! Order Section Time in Minutes 1 Essay 25 minutes 2 - 9 3 Critical Reading, 3 Math, 1 Writing, and 1 Experimental Section in any order six 25-minute sections and two20-minute sections 10 Writing 10 minutes Total: 3 hours, 45 minutes New SAT Structure By looking at the chart above, you can tell thatstudents who took the old SAT went into the test with a lot of unanswered questions about its exact format. They couldn't know exactly what order the majority of the test, sections 2 through 9, would come in. On the new SAT, you can know the order and length of each section. You also get more insight into passage and question types, which we'll explore below. First, take a look at the predictable structure of the new SAT. Order Section Time in Minutes 1 Reading 65 2 Writing and Language 35 3 Math No Calculator 25 4 Math Calculator 55 5 Essay (optional) 50 Total: 3 hours, 50 minutes (3 hours without essay) Notice that some of the section names have been changed. Critical Reading has been shortened to Reading, while Writing has been lengthened to Writing and Language (but we'll probably still call it Writing anyway). Another difference you might notice between the two tests is that the new SAT features two Math sections, one where a calculator is permitted and the other where one is prohibited. This is a new feature, as you could always use a calculator on the old SAT. Since the two tests are so different, they require somewhat different approaches to prep. Whether you’ve already studied for the old SAT or not, how can you shape your studying now to approachthis new SAT structure? Since you'll get fewer sections for longer, you'll have even more responsibility for managing your time onthe SAT. Tips for Your Prep The new SAT is all about focus. With just four sections (or five with the essay), you’ll work on one subject for a big chunk oftime. While students taking the old SAT had to get used to quickly shifting their mindset from Reading to Math to Writing and back again, students taking the new SAT will need to concentrate on one subject for an extended period of time. Since you’ll encounter longer sections, you should also practice managing your time across a large amount of material. On the Reading section, for instance, you’ve got to divide your time among five passages over 65 minutes. On the old SAT, you might struggle with one Reading section but have two(or three if your experimental section was Reading)more sections to try again. On the new SAT, you only get one Reading section and can’t return to it. You'llneed to manage your time well and make sure you don’t let one tricky passage or word problem trip you up for the rest of a section. In addition to test-taking and time management strategies, you’ll also need to do some research before you register for the SAT. Besides figuring out your best test date for the SAT, you also need to decide whether or not to take the Essay section. For the most part, this decision relies on your colleges’ requirements. Before you register, check whether your colleges require essay scores on your SAT score report. As a result of its restructuring, the SAT now has a new scoring system too. Read on to learn how the new SAT is scored and tips for adjusting your test-taking strategies. The SAT has shed its scales and embraced a whole new look. Changes in SAT Scoring: Return to 400 to 1600 Scale Any students who took the SAT in 2005 or earlier will recognize the new SAT scoring scale. It now has a maximum score of 1600, rather than 2400. Your score will be half math and half verbal. The math sections will be scored together from 200 to 800, and the Reading and Writing sections will be combined into one Evidence-based Reading and Writing (EBRW) score between 200 and 800. If you choose to take the Essay section, your essay score won’t be factored into your total scores. Instead, you’ll get three separate essay scores between 2 and 8 for Reading, Writing, and Analysis. As with the old SAT essay, two readers will read and score your essay. Just as your essay score is broken down by skill area, your test scores will also get a variety of subscores. You’ll get test scores between 10 and 40 so you can see how you did on Reading, Writing, and Math separately. You’ll also get cross-test scores and subscores that reveal how well you did on specific skill areas and question types. Finally, another big change is the adoption of rights-only scoring. While the old SAT deducted points for wrong answers, the new SAT has no penalties. You’ll get one point per correct answer, but no points added or taken away for wrong or skipped answers. The SAT has undergone big changes in its scoring system. Is there anything you can do to prepare for the new scale? Don't underestimatethe Math section, asit's now worth half of your total score! Tips for Your Prep The changes in SAT scoring affect your test prep in a few ways. First, your Reading and Writing scores no longer count for two-thirds of your total score, as they did on the old SAT. Now Reading and Writing arehalf the score, while math is the other half. This change may shift the amount of time you devote to prepping for each section. Make sure to spend sufficient time on Math, especially if it’s not your strong subject, as it now counts for a greater proportionof your overall score. If you’re writing the essay, you’d be well served to familiarize yourself with the rubric on which graders base their scores. Since you’ll get scores for Reading, Writing, and Analysis, you should learn exactly what you need to accomplish to score an 8 in each of these three categories. While your section and total scores matter most for college, the more specific cross-test scores and subscores can be useful feedback. If you’re retaking the SAT, then these scores can help you identify exactly which question types are your strong point and which ones are weak points. Even if you haven’t taken the SAT yet, you can take the time to calculate these scores from your own practice tests. These scores will give you insight into your strengths and weaknesses, insight you can then use to shape your study plan. Finally, the switch to rights-only scoring means that you no longer have to worry about which questions to answer and which to leave blank. In fact, you shouldn’t leave any questions blank, as there’s no penalty for wrong answers. If you’re not sure on a question, you should still give it your best try. With only four answer choices on the new SAT (as opposed to the previous five), you have an even stronger chance of making a lucky guess! Now that we’ve reviewed the big picture 2016 SAT changes, let’s take a closer look at specific changes to content and question types in each subject area, Reading, Writing and Language, and Math. After you read through these changes, you’ll get an extra one that appears in all three subjects - data interpretation questions. First, though, let’s take a look at the new SAT Reading section. On the new SAT Reading, you'll know the general topics of each of the five passages. Changes in SAT Reading: New Question Types One change to SAT Reading is its greater predictability. You know exactly how many passages you’ll get - five - and the subject matter that each with will deal with - one with US and World Literature, two with History and Social Studies, and two with Science. All of the questions will be passage-based and will test four main skill areas: Command of Evidence, Words in Context, Analysis in History/Social Studies, and Analysis in Science.Many Reading questions resemble those on the old SAT; they ask you to interpret the meaning of a passage, supporting detail, or individual word. There are two big 2016 SAT changes to Reading that you should know, though, the first being the elimination of sentence completion questions. #1: No More Sentence Completions As you just read, the SAT Reading questions are all passage-based. This means that the sentence completions on the old SAT have been completely done away with. These were stand-alone questions that asked you to fill in one or two blanks with often obscure, high-level vocabulary words. On the new SAT, these question types have disappeared. Vocabulary still plays a role, though, as sentence completions have beenreincarnated as Words in Context questions. Words in Contextquestions will ask you the meaning of a word in the context of its passage. These words won’t be especially obscure; instead, they’ll feature more commonly used words that may be being used in an unusual way. While the new SAT has gotten rid of sentence completions, it’s introduced an entirely new question type: the evidence-based question. #2: Evidence-Based Questions For the first time, SAT Reading features questions that relate to one another. One question may ask you to interpret the meaning of a sentence or paragraph. Then the next question may ask for the reason behind your answer to the previous question. This official sample question features one of these new evidence-based questions: Most evidence-based questions will feature this same wording: â€Å"Which choice provides the best evidence for the answer to the previous question?† In the past year, a few students noticed these new question types on the experimental sections of their SAT tests; if you’re in this group, then you may already have some experience with this question type on test day! In addition to learning about these changes in question types, what else can you do to prepare for them? Make sure to incorporate historical and scientific texts into your prep for SAT Reading. Tips for Your Reading Prep There are many concepts and strategies you can use to prep for Reading, but, for now, let’s focus on what you can do to prepare specifically for the changes described above. First, you learned that the texts are no longer predominantly prose, but instead are sourced from history, social studies, and science. To get ready, you should seek out a variety of texts - readings from history and science class may be helpful here - to develop your reading comprehension skills across genres. Science passages can be especially technical, so you want to practice reading scientific texts. College Board’s first official SAT practice test, for example, features a passage by â€Å"Fathers of DNA† Watson and Crick. This type of writing, produced by scientists in 1953, is quite different than a passage from, say, Jane Austen’s Emma. Since sentence completions are gone, you don’t have to worry about studying long lists of obscure vocabulary anymore (as a taker of the â€Å"old SAT,† I still can’t believe students won’t need to memorize the definitions of words like obstreperous and perspicacity!). Instead, you should focus on more commonly used, multiple-meaning words and gain a sense of how meaning shifts depending on context. The final new SAT change for which you should prepare is the introduction of evidence-based questions. While these questions are new, the mindset of backing up your answer with evidence from the text shouldn’t be. Reading questions have always required that you base your answers completely on information presented in apassage. In many ways, these new questions serve as helpful reminders to refer back to the text and to double check that you have specific proof from the text to back up your answers. Now let’s take a look at the new SAT changes in Writing, many of which resemble the changes in Reading. SAT Writing and Language still tests grammar, but in a somewhatdifferent way. Changes in SAT Writing and Language: Passage-Based Questions One new SAT change involves naming: the Writing section is now technically called Writing and Language. Since most long words and titles inevitably get abbreviated, though, the majority of people will probably still refer to it as the Writing section. Just like in the Reading section, the Writing section’s questions are now 100% passage-based. They still ask about English grammar and usage, but they’ll also ask you to do big-picture editing, like reorganizing ideas or adding a sentence to improve meaning. Additionally, you’ll now get some questions that ask about punctuation, like comma and apostrophe usage. As with the Reading section, the subject matter of the Writing passages is predetermined. You’ll get four passages, one each dealing with Careers, Social Studies, Humanities, and Science. Unlike the Reading, you won’t get any prose; instead, the passages will be texts that are argument-based, explanatory, or nonfiction narrative. You’ll get many questions that ask you whether adding a detail or reorganizing sentences would strengthen a passage. Some words and sentences will be best just as they are, so one of your answer choices will be, â€Å"No Change.† Given this switch to passage-based questions, many of which focus on big-picture editing, what can you do to prepare for the new SAT changes in Writing? Tips for Your Writing prep Your prep for the new Writing section remains similar to what it was for the old. You should focus on rules of grammar and usagewhile also adding punctuation rules to your review. The redesigned section also calls for a strong understanding of structure, organization, and transitions betweenideas. Developing your writing and editing skills in school will help you do well in this section. As with the Reading passages, you should also work to sharpen your reading comprehension of texts from various nonfiction genres, especially from the fields of social studies and science. As you read, pay attention to how an author introduces, concludes, and movesbetween ideas, as well as how she uses supporting details to reinforce an argument or central thesis. Again, both verbal sections now place a heavy emphasis on vocabulary, details, and ideas in context with their entirely passage-based questions. As you read, write, and edit in your SAT prep, in school, and in your own time, make sure to pay attention to the context around a word or detail that helps shape its meaning and purpose. Get ready to write out math problems by hand. There are 20 questions that you'll have to solve without a calculator. Changes in SAT Math: New Skills and Calculator Rules The new SAT Math is divided into a 25-minute section and a 55-minute section with a short break in-between. Let’s take a look at the 2016 SAT changes in skill areas, as well as explore the new calculator rules. #1: DifferentSkill Areas The new SAT Math focuses largely on algebra. For the first time, it also features problems that ask about trigonometry and complex numbers. The number of geometry problems has been largely reduced, now making up only about 3 to 5% of the total questions. These trig, complex numbers, and geometry questions fall into the skill area called Additional Topics. The other skill areas are Heart of Algebra, Passport to Advanced Math, and Problem Solving and Data Analysis. Another 2016 SAT change is the emphasis on word problems featuring â€Å"real world scenarios.† College Board says that it wants to test the math you’ll use in real-life situations, like in college courses, jobs, and even your personal life. You’ll see questions, for instance, that ask you to calculate gas mileage of a car or to convert one country’s currency into another. Before discussing how you can prep for the changes in math content, let’s review the secondbig change: the division into a â€Å"calculator prohibited† and a â€Å"calculator permitted† section. #2: No Calculator and Calculator Section You’ll start in on SAT Math with a 25-minute section during which you’re not allowed to use a calculator. The 20 questions in this section don’t necessarily require a calculator; instead, they’re meant to test your understanding of a mathematical concept, rather than your ability to perform complex calculations out by hand. You’ll probably get some basic arithmetic on the No Calculator section, but it won’t go beyond multiplication or division of numbers with decimals. In fact, many of the questions on both sections are easier to solve without the use of a calculator. So even when you’re allowed to use it on your second section, you might be better off solving many of the problems by hand. Taking these changes together, how can you sharpen your math skills and do well in these two sections? Tips for Your Math Prep To begin, you should familiarize yourself with exactly what concepts will be tested on SAT Math. Make sure your practice materials break down each of the major skill areas - Heart of Algebra, Passport to Advanced Math, Problem Solving and Data Analysis, and Additional Topics - into their component subtopics. Then you can pair your review of each concept with relevant practice questions. Your main focus will be algebra, but you’ll need to be able to do some trigonometry and geometry as well. You should also practice reading comprehension when it comes to word problems. Some of these word problems will contain extraneous information, so you’ll need to discern which details are important for working toward a solution. In order to prepare fully for the No Calculator section, you should sharpen your skills of solving multiplication, division, addition, and subtraction problems by hand. You won’t have to do a lot of calculating, as this section aims to test your conceptual understanding rather than your ability to mimic a calculator. Still, though, you’ll get a few questions that will require calculations, so you want to make sure you can still write out these problems long-hand. Finally, you read above that you might not always need a calculator, even on the problems when you’re permitted to do so. College Board says it wants to test your calculator fluency, or ability to determine when a calculator’s a useful tool and when it’s unnecessary. Keep a critical eye on your calculator use as you answer practice questions and take note of which question types call for a calculator and which ones don’t. Now that you’ve seen the main changes in SAT Reading, Writing, and Math, let’s look at the optional fifth section, the SAT essay. Your essay prompt may saysomething like, Explain how the dog presents his argument that sweaters should notbe shared with parrots. Your essay should not explain whether you agree with the dog, but rather explain how he builds an argument to persuade his avine audience. Changes in SAT Essay: Analyzing an Argument The fact that the essay’s now optional is one major change; in the past, it was your first section on the SAT and factored into your overall Writing score. Now, the essay will come last if you choose to take it. The old SAT essay was only 25 minutes. It presented you with a quote and asked you to â€Å"take a stand,† supporting your opinion with examples from just about anywhere. You could talk about experiences in your own life, observations of others, characters in books, or historical events, to name a few. Your examples had to support your opinion, and you were welcome to use the first person â€Å"I† throughout. The new SAT essay is twice as long at 50 minutes. Unlike the old essay, the new essay doesn’t ask for a personal opinion. Instead, it asks you to write a third-person analysis of the argument presented in a given passage. (If you’ve made it this far in the guide, you’ve probably noticed that lots of content on the new SAT is passage-based.) You’ll get a passage, followed by a prompt that asks you to analyze the passage’s central argument. In particular, you’ll describe the devices the author uses to present his/her point of view. In order to analyze the argument, you’ll need to understand how supporting evidence and rhetorical devices function in the passage. While the old essay was often abstract, personal, and philosophical, the new essay is more concrete and analytical. Because this section has changed so much and uses a distinct scoring system from the other sections, you’ll want to prep specifically for this section if you decide to take it. Tips for Essay Prep First and foremost, you need to figure out whether taking the essay is beneficial to you. For most students, this means researching your prospective colleges’ policies on the SAT and whether or not they want to see this section. If you’re a younger student unsure where you want to apply or if your colleges still haven’t set a policy, then you may choose to take this section just in case. More selective colleges are likely to require that you take the SAT with Essay. Your prep for this section should be largely different than it was on the old SAT. For instance, you don’t need to show up prepared with flexible examples that you could apply to many prompts. Instead, you should practice your skills of analysis, particularly analysis of how an author uses rhetorical devices and presents evidence to persuade readers of her point of view. As with the old SAT, you should get a firm grasp ofstructure and practice writing this kind of essay under time limits. You might pair up with a friend and grade each other’s using the essay scoring rubric. Through practice, you’ll improve your skills at analyzing an argument and writing a thesis-driven five paragraph essay under time limits. Before reviewing the key new SAT changes you’ll see on the redesigned test, let’s look at one more addition that pops up across the test: data interpretation questions. Prepare yourself. We're heading into charted territory. One More Change: Data Interpretation Questions If you flip through a sample SAT, you’ll see graphics popping up in every section of the SAT. While you may be used to seeing graphs in the Math section, now you’ll get graphs, tables, and charts in Reading and Writing too. A graphic will accompany one or more passages in both the Reading and Writing sections. You’ll get a few data interpretation questions that may ask whether the passage and graph are in sync with each other. A Writing question could ask if adding or deleting a data point from the graph would clarify a passage’s main argument. Below are a few official examples of data interpretation questions, one each from Reading, Writing, and Math. We'll be posting a guide to answering data interpretation soon, so check back for more strategies on attackingthese new questions! Example of a Data Interpretation Question in Reading Example of a Data Interpretation Question in Writing Example of a Data Interpretation Question in Math The latteris also an example of an Extended Thinking question in Math, in which more than one question refers to the same graphic or word problem. You should only get one Extended Thinking question, and it will likely show up in the calculator permitted section. Since data interpretation questions show up all over the test, you’ll want to sharpen your skills of reading graphs, tables, and charts. This shift, along with the others mentioned above, will help you prepare for the 2016 SAT changes. Let’s quickly review the main updates in each section and the test as a whole. Students, the SAT of the future is here. Final Thoughts: Key New SAT Changes In many ways, the new SAT looks likea whole new test. Its structure is radically different, with just four sections, Reading, Writing and Language, Math No Calculator, and Math with Calculator, as opposed to its previous ten. While the old SAT had students write a 25-minute opinion-based essay at the beginning of the test, the new SAT gives students the option of writing a 50-minute evidence-based essay at its end. While the old scores fell between 800 and 2400, the new SAT is scored between 400 and 1600. No longer do all three sections haveequal weight. Now, Math counts for half of your total score and Reading and Writing together make up the other half. As you read above, the Reading section has largelyeliminated high-level vocabulary words and features new evidence-based questions. Writing questions are also all passage-based and ask you to edit grammar, punctuation, and structure. For the first time, the SAT contains a Math section for which you can’t use a calculator. The math questions primarily focus on algebra, but you’ll also get a few geometry, trigonometry, and complex numbers questions. As you just read, data interpretation isn’t consigned to just the Math sections; you’ll find and interpret graphics on all three sections of the test. If you’ve made it this far, then you’ve already completed an important first step of your SAT prep: familiarizing yourself with the changes on the redesigned test. By first understanding the structure, scoring, and content of the new test, you can then move onto studying concepts and taking practice tests. Once you’ve learned all about the test, you’re ready to jump into studying and master the SAT. What’s Next? You’ve learned all about the changes, so now it’s time to delve into SAT content and strategies. Check out ourultimate study guides to learn all about concepts,question types, and strategies forthe SAT Math, SAT Reading, and SAT Writing. Are you taking the SAT with Essay? This comprehensive guide walks you through how to write an SAT essay, step by step. Are you deciding between the SAT and ACT? This guide compares the two tests so you can see all of their similarities and differences. Want to improve your SAT score by 160 points?We've written a guide about the top 5 strategies you must be using to have a shot at improving your score. Download it for free now: