Wednesday, October 30, 2019

Colony colapse disorder Case Study Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Colony colapse disorder - Case Study Example The queen is also present meaning that the hive is not dead. Before the actual CCD takes place, the colony members always become reluctant to eat the food (protein supplement and sugar syrup) provided. CCD is if great global significance because a very high percentage of agricultural crops are pollinated by bees. Background information on miticides, antibiotics, and neonicotinoid pesticides Neonicotinoid pesticides are commonly used in various parts of the world. This group of pesticides assume the model of nicotine which is a natural insecticide. Neonicotinoid pesticides act on the central nervous system (CNS) of insects causing excitation of nerves and finally, paralysis. Evidence from research has revealed that the use of pesticides like neonicotinoid pesticides and nicotine-based pesticides greatly affects the functioning and learning abilities of honeybees. This is very critical to the workers since they are the most active and dependable members of a colony. According to Gary e t al (2009), it has been documented that neonicotinoid pesticides levels that are able to affect the ability learning of bees occur in pollen hence they affect bees that feed on such pollen. There is an increasing threat on honeybees and their hives by mites and this has increased the dependence on miticides in order to control the situation. Basically, miticides are used in agriculture, to control the spread of mites. This is important because mites have a key role to play in the loss of good health among honeybees. However, the intensive use of these miticides has led to the development of their resistance by mites. To add an injury to this, toxicity tests conducted on bee hives have revealed that the levels of miticides in many bee hives has greatly increased (Mullen et al, 2010). Miticides are destructive to colonies of bees because they accumulate in bees wax. Bees wax is a least renewable resource in the hive hence it provides a base on which persistent pesticides can accumula te and cause toxic house syndrome (Mullen et al, 2010). In modern medicine, antibiotics are among the medications that are prescribed most frequently. Antibiotics are important for both animals and plants because they kill or injure disease-causing bacteria. However, it has been found that their use contribute to deficiencies of the immune system while their prolonged use lead to antibiotic resistant diseases and super-pests. Many commercial beekeepers administer antibiotics on regular basis as a protective measure against brood diseases hence honeybees have not been exempted from the effects of prolonged use of antibiotics. It has been found out that the major bacterial diseases that attack bees have also developed resistance to antibiotics. Resistance to pesticides has triggered the development of genetically modified crops that are thought to be producing pollen that also cause CCD (Gary et al, 2009. Potential Causes of Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) The causes of CCD are still u nder investigation and almost every realistic and conceivable cause is a possibility. Four areas of research focused on by scientists in early times included bee management stresses such as poor nutrition, environment-related stresses, parasites and pathogen, and pesticides and chemicals. In the early studies, scientists had ruled out some conditions and practices from being probable causes of CCD. They include chemicals used by the

Monday, October 28, 2019

Notes on the Ethical Theories Essay Example for Free

Notes on the Ethical Theories Essay Immanuel Kant (notice that he lived in the 1700’s and people likely had different views back then), a philosopher, believes that using reason, one can make a list of ethical actions. Kant says that one must generalize the certain action he is about to do to see if it is reasonable. For example, you ask yourself â€Å"should I cut the line in the cafeteria?† The way you can answer this question is by asking yourself â€Å"What if everyone cut the line?† Of course, if that happened then there would be chaos, so you shouldn’t cut the line. This also applies to stealing, murdering, and keeping promises. He basically says that everyone is equal and you shouldn’t justify your actions to yourself because you are not special and you wouldn’t want others to do that to you. â€Å"Treat others as you would have them treat you.† Golden Rule. But, if only you do this and no one else does you are going to get eaten up by the world. This may contradict a person’s adaptability and may negatively appeal to emotion; you will feel like a B-. Veil of ignorance- You have two people who love cake. Tell one person to cut a cake in half but let the other choose which half to take. Again, Golden Rule. Kant says there is a difference between objects and people, you can replace objects but not people. Someone broke my computer, I am sad. He buys me a new one, I am happy. I am about to die, my parents are sad. They can clone me, should they be happy? He also says that you shouldn’t kill people for the greater good. But what if they were murderers or rapists aren’t they causing sadness, and their deaths would in fact be for the greater good? Kant sees that a persons intentions that count rather than the final result. But what if I am helping a person, who is bad and corrupt, against a thief who is only trying to feed his family, quite the dilemma. Kant uses only reasoning rather than emotion so that people always do what is right rather than when they feel like it. Consistency is key to his theories. Criticisms of Kant Moral Absolutism You can’t always not lie. What if a murderer wants to kill your dad? Your dad hides and then the murder breaks in and asks you were he is. If you follow Kant’s ideas, you would tell him where your dad is. There must be some sort of emotion to counteract those who do not follow the philosophy of Kant. But again, Kant is saying that EVERYONE should do this, and this murderer wouldn’t exist in Kant’s ideal world. Rule worship- To blindly follow rules without using your own knowledge. â€Å"If rules can not be bent, then they should be broken.† Conflicts of duty- should you steal the medicine for your dying wife? Should you save your grandmother from the burning house or the doctor who can save many people? Moral coldness- The world would be emotionless and sad. There will be little space for happiness because everything is going to be so constant and emotions will have a very small presence. Utilitarianism- Seek the greatest happiness for the greatest number. What if you could randomly pick 10 people to die and save 100? Would you do it? You can say yes, because it logical, you use no emotion what so ever. That goes against Kant though because he says that people have dignity and you shouldn’t take that away. You can say no, where you are mostly using emotion.

Saturday, October 26, 2019

Is Canada a Post-Industrial Country? Essay -- Economics, History

The term post-industrialism refers to a transition from one form of society to another; the original society being an industrial society, mainly dominated by forms of specialized physical labour, and the latter being a service and knowledge dominated format. An industrial society has many unique and definitive characteristics that separate it from a post-industrial one. Some of these characteristics include the heavy use of machinery in large factories; the use of fossil fuels to power the machinery; the specialization of jobs allowing for increased productivity, which led to urban expansion. In regards to class dynamics, there are/were few people at the† top†, who own the factors of production, and many front-line, blue-collar workers at the â€Å"bottom.† The huge gaps in income, status, and control between these two groups produced an imbalance of power; considered a negative aspect of industrialism. With Industrialism, work is specialized, and it has been said that these workers were alienated from the goods they helped produce as a result. In contrast, a post-industrial society marks a shift from a society based on the mass production of goods to one that hinges on the provision of services. In this type of society, capital switches from bodies and heavy machinery to knowledge, as with knowledge comes creativity, a force seemingly responsible for economic growth in a post-industrial society. As far as creativity is concerned, it can flow from the skills of an engineer, a scientist, an artist, etc. Much emphasis is placed on the upgrading of human capital and of attaining some form of specialized education. This type of knowledge-based economy logically offers more opportunity to those with a high-level education, creat... ...s Canada created in this post-industrial era. Are the jobs a small amount of high-end and high-paid service jobs that require large investments in human capital or are they low-end service jobs that require minimal education and training? Works Cited Krahn, H., Lowe, G. Hughes, K. (2008). Work, Industry & Canadian Society. (5th ed.) Toronto, ON: Nelson Education Ltd. HRSDC Labour statistics Division. (2009). The Canadian Labour Market at a Glance 2007. Ottawa, ON: Statistics Canada. HRSDC Labour Statistics Division. (2007). Looking Ahead: A Ten-Year Outlook for the Canadian Labour Market (2006 – 2015). Ottawa, ON: Retrieved from http://www.hrsdc.gc.ca/eng/publications_resources/research/categories/labour_market_e/sp_615_10_06/supply Critoph, Ursule. Et al. (2010). Sociology of Work and Industry. Alberta, CA: Athabasca University.

Thursday, October 24, 2019

Use of Images in Understanding of Documents in Cross-Language Information Retrieval

The introduction of the research paper clearly gives the solution for Cross-Language Information Retrieval and that being used for image in understanding foreign languages.The author goes on to say that a document can be represented using series of images that has been drawn from significant terms in the document itself and therefore, because of this the document can be understood quiet simply as a whole or partly.The research clearly gives the introduction to CLIR. The researcher says that if the above mentioned technique works then there would be no requirement for, Translation as these images can be used for multi-lingual representation.Reduced dependency on lexicons. No need for maintenance. No need for human translation. No need for computer based translation.The technique would use images that are available on the internet. The researcher then tries to derive sub-sets of images of languages. The aim of the paper is to see how images can be used in document understanding, so tha t all the above advantages can be benefited from. The paper is a generalised research looking into the following areasWhether search terms and images are similar in meaning. Theory development what the subject understand from the images. Images for language sub-sets. Research into the uses involved. Research into the search categories of words and images returned.Research ContextThe research context takes the reader through the entire cycle of CLIR, how the research started and how it has evolved over the period of time. CLIR itself is described, defined and explained in different ways so that the reader can understand the depth of it.Documents are available in different languages and that requires the computer user to have at least a minimum understanding of the language to comprehend it. Document representation has not been that effective keeping in mind documents that far technical or that needs a higher level of understanding. CLIR is used inA multi-language search using only on e query language. Searchers understand the document but are not efficient enough to query in the same language.A person who does not understand English can retrieve documents in English by a query in their own language or a language they understand. All the above points are reflected in research done by Grefenstette (1998a), Oard (2001), Sanderson and Clough (2002), Pirkola et al (2001), Scott McCarley and Roukos (1998).According to Rosch et al (1976) object categorisation is done with reference to a ‘basic level’ categorisation. The basic requirement for CLIR is the World Wide Web (Scott McCarley and Roukos (1998), Ballesteros and Croft (1998a) and Grefenstette (1998a)) and available on-line documentations.Some of the approaches of CLIR are Document Translation, Query Translation (Dorr (1996), Resnik (1997), Hull (1998) and Fluhr et al (1998), Ballesteros and Croft (1998a)), Parallel Corpora (Scott McCarley and Roukos (1998)), Latent Semantic Indexing (Dumais et alâ₠¬â„¢s (1996)). The researcher has very effectively explained the different approaches to the CLIR explaining the methods adopted from the very beginning.The advantages and the disadvantages are clearly explained using references to Oard (1998), Scott McCarley and Roukos (1999). The enormity of pages (Google (2003)) makes indexing of documents in foreign languages very difficult to translate.   CLIR with images stated off with Sanderson and Clough (2002) research requires no form of gisting to judge the accuracy of the returned item because a correlation is got between the retrieved image and the searched text.The only area that the researcher does not explain is the kind of difference in subject, styles and types of recovery. So it is vague in understanding the possible errors or misinterpretation that can arise if these points are taken into account.Machine translation types (Hutchins and Somers (1992) and Somers (2003)) have been explained; direct, transfer and interlingua along with the limitations (Leech et al (1989)) have also been explained. Limitations being in the area of speed ((Somers 2003) and (www.speechtechnology.com (2003)), ambiguity (O’Grady et al (1996:270), (Hutchins and Somers (1992)).Context and Real World Knowledge (Somers (2003)), Problems with Lexicons (Reeder and Loehr (1998)), Not Translated Words (Reeder and Loehr (1998)), Unknown Proper Nouns (Ballesteros and Croft (1998a)), Compound Words (Hutchins and Somers (1992), Sheridan and Ballerini (1998)), New Words ((O’Grady (1997)), Document Context (Somers (2003)), Minority Languages (Somers (2003)), Babelfish (Hutchins and Somers (1992)) and Sub Languages (Somers (2003)) are all well explained with examples.

Wednesday, October 23, 2019

Discuss psychological explanations of one eating disorder

Discuss Psychological explanations of one eating disorder. (8+16) Psychological explanations of obesity Include the psychodrama and the behaviorism approach. Behaviorism suggests three means by which obesity may occur; classical conditioning, operant conditioning and social learning theory. There Is a great deal of evidence for the behavioral explanation. Classical conditioning is where eating becomes associated with other behaviors that are often routine, leading to eating when not hungry for example snacking whilst watching TV.Evidence for this as a cause of obesity comes from Fletcher et alls ‘Do something different' study which shows how breaking such habitual associations prevents overeating, and so leads to weight loss, even for people who are not actually dieting. Furthermore, evidence for the role of operant conditioning, which is related to food being used as a reward, comes from Wanting at al who noted that people can turn to food and eat excessively for comfort, usin g food as a reward.However, operant conditioning alone cannot explain obesity, as we know there are biological factors which affect how rewarding retain foods are, therefore the behavioral approach as an explanation of obesity can be seen as reductionism. Operant conditioning, although not offering a full explanation for the causes of obesity, does have some good practical applications. Techniques using operant conditioning have been very successful in reinforcing healthy eating practices.Devoid and Yankton found Up's on such a programmer has an average weight loss of between 1 5 and 20 Lbs on the scheme. However, Just because it is successful in treating the eating disorder doesn't mean it can be seen as a viable cause for obesity. Social Learning theory is the third means by which the behaviorism approach suggests obesity may occur and it suggests that obesity is due to observing and imitating obese role models, particularly people we identify with in some way.In order for this to be valid, the relationship between one obese person and the role models around them has to be assessed. Chalks and Fowler did Just that and found that a person's chance of becoming obese Increased by 57% If they had a friend who became obese. However, although many extraneous variables were enthroned in this study, it was still only correlation in nature and correlation does not indicate causation meaning other factors such as biology or culture cannot be ruled out as other possible contributing factors to obesity.Although there is a great deal of evidence to support the behaviorism approach it can be seen as limited as it ignores biological and genetic factors that also have a great deal of support with regards to causing obesity, egg Standard et al who found a strong relationship between adopted and genetic mother's weight and no relationship between adopted and adoptive arena's weight. However, taking the deterministic nature of the behaviorism approach as a positive It does hav e an optimistic message with regards to beating obesity.Due to the fact the basis of the behaviorism approach Is that all behaviors are learned and can therefore be unlearned, means that obese people may be more willing to try dieting and other forms of lifestyle change more readily than if they futile. There is a problem with this view however as it focuses on the role of nurture rather than nature which can often cause blame to be put onto parents for their bees children.While in some cases this can have a positive effect as the parent realizes the necessity of educating their child on healthy food choices and not associating certain activities with food, it can also raise ethical issues as families are not protected from potential emotional harm from being blamed for their obese child's health issues. In addition to the behaviorism explanation of obesity, the psychodrama explanation of obesity offers an alternative on the causes of this eating disorder.The psychodrama explanation of obesity is based around Fraud's incept of problem behaviors in adult hood being due to unresolved conflicts that occurred during childhood development through the psychosocial stages with obesity being linked to unconscious desires of the oral phase. This could be caused by a lack of gratification in the oral stage or over gratification and both could lead to obesity. Evidence for the role of the ID (a structure of the unconscious mind that is concerned with gratifying needs) and oral fixation come from Grant and Borders who found that adult loneliness was a key issue in overeating for all Up's.Furthermore, bused Up's used food to ‘numb pain' whereas non abused Up's used it to recreate warmth and nurturing experienced in childhood that they missed in their lonely adult life. This shows the effect of both under and over gratification in the oral stage of psychosocial development. It seems that as an adult, emotional difficulties or trauma may lead to regression to the oral stage thus overeating. Eating may also result as a substitute for affection.However there are a few issues with this study; there was only a very small sample and the fact that the research was very sensitive means that the reliability of Up's recall may be questionable. However, as with the behavioral approach, there are practical applications associated with the psychodrama approach for example it highlights the need for social support; if a person does not feel lonely at a time of emotional distress, it seems the regression back to the oral stage and thus overeating may not occur.In addition to social support, the psychodrama explanation of obesity highlights the cause which can then be used to treat obesity, which in this case is a symptom of a larger problem; Hereford there is optimism attached to this explanation as with the behaviorism approach. Furthermore, Rounded et al has also found a link between childhood abuse and obesity. They found that child sexual abuse is associat ed with a doubling of odds of obesity in a telephone sample of 4,641 women.However once again there are methodological issues regarding this research as it is geocentric so cannot be generalizes to the wider population of both men and women- it lacks population validity. There is also further supportive evidence from Williamson et al who found NY form of abuse can lead to an increased chance of obesity showing regression into childhood and the oral phase in order to find missed gratification.However, there are many issues regarding the psychodrama approach including the fact that it cannot be investigated scientifically using the features of science that psychology attempts to follow. It is speculative in nature and based on philosophy of the mind rather than scientific fact. Therefore the validity and reliability of the explanation of obesity is very low. It can never be scientifically proven due to its nature so will