Personal Health Assessment Essay

Overall, there are six dimensions of health that can be examined to determine if a person is healthy and fit or to see what area in his or her life needs improvement. This includes physical, psychological, spiritual, social, intellectual, and environmental dimensions. â€Å"When all of the six dimensions are at high levels and in balance, we have optimal health and well-being† (Blonna & Watter, 2005, p. 5). The three dimensions of health that I feel I am strongest at are the physical, sscial, and intellectual dimensions. Physically, I am contented with how I look and feel. I believe that I am healthy and that I take the proper precautions to take care of my body. Being free from any illnesses does not mean that a person fulfils the physical dimension of health. I think that one has to be satisfied about his or her overall health and body in order for him or her to say that he or she is physically healthy. In addition, being positive about how a person sees his or her body contributes to a better physical health. I would also like to indicate that I fulfil the social dimension of health since I do not have a problem reaching out to people. I have excellent relationships with my friends and family and this helps me grow as a person. I believe that keeping this dimension healthy is important because having people that would support you greatly contributes to a person’s well-being and improvement of the other five dimensions. The third dimension of health that I think I am strongest at is the intellectual dimension. I believe that I think clearly and that I can understand things the way they should be understood. I am very open-minded when it comes to arguing and accepting things that are not in line with my beliefs. I can argue with other people rationally and with the right common sense. On the other hand, I feel that my spiritual dimension needs improvement. â€Å"Spiritual wellness is the state of harmony with yourself and others. It is the ability to balance inner needs with the demands of the rest of the world† (Edlin, Golanty, & Brown, 1999, p. ). With our fast paced world, it is very hard for one to sit down and think about these kinds of things. There are so many distractions around us that we forget to think about our spirituality. I think that it is important for me to address this issue at this time because it would help me improve my overall well-being. I understand the importance of spiritual life and I would like to engage myself better with this area. For a person to impro ve, he or she needs determination and commitment. Improvement, especially in the area of spirituality, would not mean anything if there is no purpose behind it and if the person is doing it just for the sake of saying he or she has improved. I would like to start off by trying to learn more about what I want in terms of spiritual fulfilment. I would then gradually engage myself in my religion and take small steps to improve my inner self. I think that I would have to get to know myself better in order for me to realize what I want and need. Personally, I expect to learn from this course ways on how to know myself better, how to improve myself completely, and how to determine which areas in my life need improvements the most. Although determining is easy, it is better to learn through a knowledgeable instructor and through related materials and activities. Taking this course would also make it easier because I will be able to learn with a group of other people and not just by myself.

How and Why Guinea Pigs Were Domesticated

How and Why Guinea Pigs Were Domesticated Guinea pigs (Cavia porcellus) are small rodents raised in the South American Andes mountains not as friendly pets, but primarily for dinner. Called cuys, they reproduce rapidly and have large litters. Today guinea pig feasts are connected with religious ceremonies throughout South America, including feasts associated with Christmas, Easter, Carnival, and Corpus Christi. Modern domesticated adult Andean guinea pigs range from eight to eleven inches long and weigh between one and two pounds. They live in harems, approximately one male to seven females. Litters are generally three to four pups, and sometimes as many as eight; the gestation period is three months. Their lifespan is between five and seven years. Domestication Date and Location Guinea pigs were domesticated from the wild cavy (most likely Cavia tschudii, although some scholars suggest Cavia aperea), found today in the western (C. tschudii) or central (C. aperea) Andes. Scholars believe that domestication occurred between 5,000 and 7,000 years ago, in the Andes. Changes identified as the effects of domestication are increased body size and litter size, changes in behavior and hair coloration. Cuys are naturally gray, domesticated cuys have multicolored or white hair. Keeping Guinea Pigs in the Andes Since both wild and domestic forms of guinea pigs can be studied in a laboratory, behavioral studies of the differences have been completed. Differences between wild and domestic guinea pigs are in some part behavioral and part physical. Wild cuys are smaller and more aggressive  Ã¢â‚¬â€¹and pay more attention to their local environment than domestic ones and wild male cuys do not tolerate each other and live in harems with one male and several females. Domestic guinea pigs are larger and more tolerant of multi-male groups, and exhibit increased levels of social grooming of one another and increased courtship behavior. In traditional Andean households, cuys were (and are) kept indoors but not always in cages; a high stone sill at the entrance of a room keeps cuys from escaping. Some households built special rooms or cubby holes for cuys, or more typically keep them in the kitchens. Most Andean households kept at least 20 cuys; at that level, using a balanced feeding system, Andean families could produce at least 12 pounds of meat per month without decreasing their flock. Guinea pigs were fed barley and kitchen scraps of vegetables, and the residue from making chicha (maize) beer. Cuys were valued in folk medicines and its entrails were used to divine human illness. Subcutaneous fat from the guinea pig was used as a general salve. Archaeology and the Guinea Pig The first archaeological evidence of the human use of guinea pigs dates to about 9,000 years ago. They may have been domesticated as early as 5,000 BC, probably in the Andes of Ecuador; archaeologists have recovered burned bones and bones with cut marks from midden deposits beginning about that time. By 2500 BC, at sites such as the Temple of the Crossed Hands at Kotosh and at Chavin de Huantar, cuy remains are associated with ritual behaviors. Cuy effigy pots were made by the Moche (circa AD 500-1000). Naturally mummified cuys have been recovered from the Nasca site of Cahuachi and the late prehispanic site of Lo Demas. A cache of 23 well-preserved individuals was discovered at Cahuachi; guinea pig pens were identified at the Chimu site of Chan Chan. Spanish chroniclers including Bernabe Cobo and Garcilaso de la Vega wrote about the role of the guinea pig in Incan diets and ritual. Becoming a Pet Guinea pigs were introduced into Europe during the sixteenth century, but as pets, rather than food. Remains of one guinea pig were recently discovered within excavations at the town of Mons, Belgium, representing the earliest archaeological identification of guinea pigs in Europeand similar in time to the 17th-century paintings which illustrate the creatures, such as the 1612 Garden of Eden by Jan Brueghel the Elder. The excavations at the site of a proposed parking lot revealed a living quarter which had been occupied beginning in medieval times. The remains include eight bones of a guinea pig, all found within a middle-class cellar and adjacent cesspit, radiocarbon dated between AD 1550-1640, shortly after the Spanish conquest of South America. The recovered bones included a complete skull and the right part of the pelvis, leading Pigià ¨re et al. (2012) to conclude that this pig was not eaten, but rather kept as a domestic animal and discarded as a complete carcass. Sources History of the Guinea Pig  from archaeologist Michael Forstadt. Asher, Matthias. Large males dominate: Ecology, social organization, and mating system of wild cavies, the ancestors of the guinea pig. Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology, Tanja Lippmann, Jà ¶rg Thomas Epplen, et al., Research Gate, July 2008. Gade DW. 1967.  The Guinea Pig in Andean Folk Culture.  Geographical Review  57(2):213-224. Kà ¼nzl C, and Sachser N. 1999.  The Behavioral Endocrinology of Domestication: A Comparison between the Domestic Guinea Pig (Cavia apereaf.porcellus) and Its Wild Ancestor, the Cavy (Cavia aperea).  Hormones and Behavior  35(1):28-37. Morales E. 1994.  The Guinea Pig in the Andean Economy: From Household Animal to Market Commodity.  Latin American Research Review 29(3):129-142. Pigià ¨re F, Van Neer W, Ansieau C, and Denis M. 2012.  New archaeozoological evidence for the introduction of the guinea pig to Europe.  Journal of Archaeological Science  39(4):1020-1024. Rosenfeld SA. 2008.  Delicious guinea pigs: Seasonality studies and the use of fat in the pre-Columbian Andean diet.  Quaternary International  180(1):127-134. Sachser, Norbert. Of Domestic and Wild Guinea Pigs: Studies in Sociophysiology, Domestication, and Social Evolution. Naturwissenschaften, Volume 85, Issue 7, SpringerLink, July 1998. Sandweiss DH, and Wing ES. 1997.  Ritual Rodents: The Guinea Pigs of Chincha, Peru.  Journal of Field Archaeology  24(1):47-58. Simonetti JA, and Cornejo LE. 1991.  Archaeological Evidence of Rodent Consumption in Central Chile.  Latin American Antiquity  2(1):92-96. Spotorno AE, Marin JC, Manriquez G, Valladares JP, Rico E, and Rivas C. 2006.  Ancient and modern steps during the domestication of guinea pigs (Cavia porcellus L.).  Journal of Zoology  270:57–62. Stahl PW. 2003.  Pre-columbian Andean animal domesticates at the edge of empire.  World Archaeology  34(3):470-483. Trillmich F, Kraus C, Kà ¼nkele J, Asher M, Clara M, Dekomien G, Epplen JT, Saralegui A, and Sachser N. 2004. Species-level differentiation of two cryptic species pairs of wild cavies, genera Cavia and Galea, with a discussion of the relationship between social systems and phylogeny in the Caviinae.  Canadian Journal of Zoology  82:516-524.

How Reporters Get Quotes for Their News Stories

How Reporters Get Quotes for Their News Stories So you’ve done a long interview with a source, you have pages of notes, and you’re ready to write. But chances are you’ll only be able to fit a few quotes from that lengthy interview into your article. Which ones should you use? Reporters often talk about using only â€Å"good† quotes for their stories, but what does this mean? What Is a Good Quote? Broadly speaking, a good quote is when someone says something interesting, and says it in an interesting way. Look at the following two examples: â€Å"We will use U.S. military force in an appropriate and decisive manner.† â€Å"When I take action, I’m not going to fire a $2 million missile at a $10 empty tent and hit a camel in the butt. It’s going to be decisive.† Which is the better quote? Let’s consider this by asking a broader question: What should a good quote do? Grab the Reader’s Attention Using our two examples, it’s clear the first quote is dry and academic-sounding. It sounds like a sentence taken from a particularly dull research paper or dissertation. The second quote, on the other hand, is colorful and even funny. Evoke Images A good quote, like good writing, evokes images in the reader’s mind. Using our two examples, it’s clear the first quote evokes nothing. But the second quote evokes a bizarre image that’s bound to stick in the reader’s brain – a camel being hit in the posterior with an expensive, high-tech missile. Convey a Sense of the Speaker’s Personality Our first quote leaves no impression of who the speaker might be. Indeed, it sounds more like a scripted line from an anonymous Pentagon press release. The second quote, however, gives the reader a feel for the personality of the speaker – in this case, President George Bush. The reader gets a sense of both Bush’s determination and his penchant for off-the-cuff humor. Convey Regional Differences in Speech Looking again at our first quote, can you discern where the speaker was raised? Of course not. But one could argue that Bush’s quote, with its salty humor and coarse imagery, contains some of the colors of his Texas upbringing. A reporter I worked with once covered a tornado in the Deep South. He interviewed victims of the twister and in his story contained a quote that included the phrase, â€Å"I tell you what.† That’s a phrase you’re only likely to hear in the South, and by putting it in his story, the reporter gave readers a feel for the region and the people affected by the storm. A good reporter could do the same thing in any area with distinctive patterns of speech, from the South Bronx to the upper Midwest to East Los Angeles. Given everything we’ve discussed, it seems clear the second of our two examples is by far the better quote. So what makes a bad quote? Unclear Speech Anytime someone says something in an unclear or unintelligible fashion, chances are you’re not going to use that as a quote. In such cases, if the information contained in the quote is important to your story, paraphrase it – put it into your own words. In fact, reporters often must paraphrase much of what they gather in interviews because many people simply don’t speak very clearly. People don’t craft their speech the way a writer crafts a sentence. Basic Factual Data If you’re interviewing a source who’s giving you reams of data, such as numbers or statistics, that kind of information should be paraphrased. There’s simply no point in quoting, for instance, the CEO who tells you his company’s revenues increased 3 percent in the second quarter, 5 percent in the third quarter and so on. It may be important for your story, but it’s boring as a quote. Profane or Offensive Speech Most mainstream news organizations have policies banning or limiting the use of vulgar or offensive speech in news stories. So, for example, if a source you’re interviewing starts swearing profusely, or uttering racial slurs, you’re probably not going to be able to quote them. An exception to that rule might be if the profane or offensive speech serves some larger purpose in your story. For instance, if you’re profiling your town’s mayor, and he has a reputation for salty language, you might use part of a profane quote in your story to show that, indeed, the man likes to cuss.

Answer the questions for each of the articles Quant and Quali Research Paper

Answer the questions for each of the articles Quant and Quali - Research Paper Example 53). The design is generally categorized under the major class of quantitative approaches to research. The major category of the design was experimental design. The random assignment of sampled subjects into a treatment and control group are identifiers characteristic of an experimental design (Sears et al., 2010, p. 53). An independent variable is a variable that the researcher has control over. In this case, the independent variable in the research was the mode of training adopted for nursing education. The manipulation of this variable was attained by assigning differing models of nursing education delivery, which included clinical simulation-based education and actual clinical placement. The dependent variable is the measured element of interest, which is affected in the research, and in this research the dependent variable was the medication errors (Sears et al., 2010, p. 52). Survey forms were used as the data collection instruments and these were filled by the instructors and students (Sears et al., 2010, p. 53). Observed medication errors were entered into forms that only bore the instructor’s name in order to preserve the confidentiality of the participating students. The external validity of the research was low because the research cannot be widely generalized. In spite of randomly selecting the participants, generalization cannot be possible for other populations and locations because all participants were from a single collaborative nursing program. This limitation reduces the external validity, but it can be overcome if the research could be replicated for different populations and locations across different times (Sears et al., 2010, p. 54). The second research titled â€Å"Whatever it takes": nursing students experiences of administering medication in the clinical setting† was authored by Happell, B. Walker, S. Moxham, L. and Reid-Searl, K. The research appeared in the seventh issue of the 20th volume of the

The working class of Indian mens working in the field of Fashion Dissertation

The working class of Indian mens working in the field of Fashion - Dissertation Example The study "The working class of Indian mens working in the field of Fashion" talks about The working class of Indian fashion Industry. With industrialization and mass production fashion got a new shape in the western world. Fashion industry has became more popular when combined with visual effects, that is through the art of photography which brings the outcomes of the designers to the doors of common people through different print media forms. on one hand photography makes the dresses and models all the more attractive and famous, while on the other, it makes the conceptual loopholes quite prominent. The 16 page editorial published in the Vogue Issue of August 2008 in India sees the new nation as a place where even the poor class takes to expensive brands and carries it off gracefully. Hence Vogue attempts to make fashion reach out to all classes of people instead of the wealthy ones or celebrities. The magazine published some photos of lower middle class people flaunting expensive branded clothes and accessories. However this kind of portrayal drew lots of controversy because the people modeling in the magazine belonged to the similar class, which witnessed suicides and poverty. What becomes prominent in this discussion is the strong influence of western culture or the cultural dependency witnessed by the Indian fashion industry. Yet, the same fashion trends which has been a pride of the glamour seeking people of the upper middle class and wealthy sections are now imposed upon. those working class people who are merely able to cover their cost of production of labor hours and some who are not even able to do so. They perhaps belong to the class of contractual or casual workers who thrive to make both ends meet. When we think of the designers and fashion photographers a finger might be raised at their sensitivity towards the human dignity. It hurts when one sees the contrast between the social status and the expensive brands. Why would a person thriving for ba re survival want to use a Burberry umbrella? Even if we assume this might one day become an economically viable option, the individual might not decide to flaunt his money through these brands even if he can afford it. The middle class people working in the fashion industry (photographers, designers and editors of fashion magazines) need to be sensitive to the ethical viability of any form of art which represents fashion trends. This prompts us to ask the question: Can Vogue’s way of representing ‘new India’ support Realism or it is an example of Aestheticism in fashion photography? II. LITERATURE REVIEW This section attempts to discuss the theories of Realism and Aestheticism in visual art and how they apply to fashion photography in particular. Reviews of different literatures are covered to learn about the evolution of fashion industry in India and the works of different fashion photographers including the way they portray fashion in the daily lives of the soc iety. The study incorporates details regarding the middle class people working in the fashion industry of India and how they portray culture and economy through their works. How the trends change along with the impact of globalization and economic upgradation. At the end of the review one might raise questions about ethics and priorities while portraying

General Education Curriculum Access Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

General Education Curriculum Access - Essay Example In the 2004 â€Å"reauthorization, another provision was added to take the monitoring process further† (p. 234) Districts with an overrepresentation of minority group members in special education must set aside 15 percent of their federal aid for students, particularly those in grades K-3, who need â€Å"additional academic and behavioral support to succeed in a general education environment,† according to the law (Andy and Beaker, 2001). The 2004 reauthorization also required states to allow districts to use a strategy called â€Å"response to intervention,† as a tool for determining if a child has a specific learning disability. Response to intervention, or RTI, involves early identification of students’ learning problems and the use of increasingly intensive lessons, or interventions, to address those problems before they become entrenched. The process has been credited as a factor in reducing the overall rate of students diagnosed with specific learnin g disabilities, which has been on a  steady decline  since 2005, Aruba (2001). ... Although parents often play an important role in securing special education services for their children, much of the responsibility of helping students with disabilities succeed in the classroom falls to teachers, Camacho and Perez-Quiroz (2002). No Child Left Behind and IDEA require special education teachers to be â€Å"highly qualified† in special education as well as in the subjects they teach. General educators, who typically have more experience teaching a specific subject area, must be able to work effectively with students with special needs, but they are not required to be highly qualified to teach students with disabilities† (Camacho and Perez-Quiroz, 2002). An experienced special education teacher typically has helped support the learning of hundreds of children with disabilities or other special needs. In order to be qualified for this work, she has had to undergo a rigorous certification process, which graduate generally includes course work at the undergrad uate and/or level in special education, depending upon the specific licensure requirements in her state (Andy and Beaker, 2001). Susan is a first grader with a wonderful imagination who loves listening to stories and quickly incorporates new words into her spoken vocabulary. Yet, while most of her classmates have begun to read fluently, she continues laboring over each word and her comprehension remains low. Susan is not a real student, but a composite of many students familiar to virtually every experienced teacher: the ones who appear bright and engaged but inexplicably founder when trying to learn some essential part of the curriculum. Determining whether a student like Susan has a specific learning

Railroad history Essay Example for Free

Railroad history Essay The reasons why Villard failed to build a profitable railroad was that he never bothered to study much about railroads so he made many mistakes such as, he rushed to the wilderness to collect his subsidies he thought that by building the rail on an area with a beautiful view he would attract tourism in the area and so they would pay handsomely to tour, so he chose to build in the northwest because of its beauty. This increased the cost of building the railroad because he had to increase the bends, the steepness and the length of the railroad to be able to take in the rocky Mountain View. Villard also did create in areas around the hot springs in broad water county, Montana and at Bozeman costly health spas. This and more expensive buildings and structures made Villard go broke because the tourist opted to visit else where. Though the federal aid and foreign investors had given Villard some space for mistakes he made way too many. He was so eager to rush to the coast that he built when the cost of materials and construction in whole was very stiff. High cost amounts to high rates and this hindered the tourists from traveling through the NP. Railroad acted as an alternative mode of transport which farmers used to travel from rural areas to the urban market whenever they had need, they also used the railroad to transport their produce thus interacting with people from other parts of the country. As the railroad changed people’s experiences, it also changed the time concepts. If a person wanted to travel from point A to point B it became more faster than pre railroad days where one had to use horses on bad road, board a steamboat, Railroads decreased the cost of distance and increased the value of time.