Reflective journal Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words - 3

Reflective journal - Essay Example In addition, I also learnt about colostomies. The high point of my day was doing an IVPB successfully with minimal direction from my clinical instructor. The low point was seeing the patient so nauseas and unable to eat anything and there was nothing I could do to help. The patients on the medical surgery floor received great care. However, the unit should be added two more nurses to ease the amount of workload that they have to do. The nurses in the unit should also be trained on how to handle patients with unique medical conditions. Although I did not encounter any challenge, I know that I can always ask for help from any of the nurses on the medical surgery floor. My interaction with patients presents an opportunity to acquire valuable life lessons. Seeing the patient deal with so much pain with a lot of calm taught me the importance of having courage when I am faced with unpleasant conditions. Lastly, my last day on the medical surgery floor provided a great opportunity to acquire practical nursing skills. I am grateful for all the things that I have learned from the other nurses and the patients. In addition, I have been able to identify my strengths and weaknesses. This experience has not only helped me to grow as a nursing profession but also as a

Economic Problems And Issues Essay Example for Free

Economic Problems And Issues Essay Does big business own by corporations synonymous with monopoly? Let us first check the nature of the capitalist market how large firms dominated the market. When only a number of large companies dominated a specific market, what resulted would be an oligopoly. This means that only the larger and selected companies had the command in the market thus excluding smaller firms. This resulted in reducing competitive pressures in the market. In this manner, there is a tendency that the price of commodities may rise above what would be the market level. The oligopolistic producers do not have rivals or competitors coming into their market circle because of relatively high capital costs. The domination of a trade commanded by few big firms especially when they are incorporated into one large organization may result in exploitation and monopoly. In the market economy, if a market is marked by an oligopolies practice, exploitation affects the consumers because they will be charged with higher prices as compared to the price in the competitive market. The Big Businesses therefore are having a bigger slice of the oligopolistic profits because of this unfair competition at the expense of smaller firm. To know more why big business gets more profits due to oligopoly and monopoly, we need to look into the economics of production and marketing in relation to capitalism. Capitalism comes in a way that it focuses on distribution not on fair production. Instead of equal trade, capitalism is guided by hierarchy and inequality to all business concerns. Usually the privately owned businesses do their production mainly for profit where investments, income, distribution and pricing of goods and services are estimated through the operation in a market economy. In the world of business economics, this is how capitalism makes an impact in the regulation of the price of the commodity. Unfortunately due to the potential of the big business to engage in capitalism, they sometimes monopolize the market. According to the economic theory of Malcom Sawyer, within the market trade there exists a certain degree of monopoly. This indicates that profits come to those businesses with monopolistic power. As always, an increase in the monopoly of large firm always directed the profit to them instead to the small businesses. This explains that the degree of monopoly within a market will determine how poorly the small firms will be able to survive as compared to those small firms who are earning more in a more competitive market. The degree of monopoly can be graded with few factors being exhibited by the big business in the market. Their market power is obvious in the volume of their market share, the extent of their advertising, the barriers that prevent small businesses to enter the mainstream and so on. The higher and stronger of these factors, the higher the degree of monopoly. There is however an argument of the monopolistic practice of big businesses. Accordingly they put up higher prices in their product because of the prices of the materials being purchased and used in the manufacturing of goods. Another reason was the unpredictable inflation and the need for sustaining the salaries of their employees. However, any reason would still result in profits for them. Such alibis only undermine the status of their employees as according to their profits. If these companies are forced to lower their prices the employees will suffer due to lower wages and compensations. Also, poor quality materials will be used which result in poor quality products and the demand will fall as well as its production. Basically large firms can always maintain their prices and profits more than the normal price in the market without assistance from the government due to their big financial back-up and market power. The existence of Big Businesses and their influence in the economy has their impact on every nation’s future. In some ways economist always compare them to be practical capitalist building their market world in their own hands. Another bad effect of capitalism and oligopoly is that when big business are lording it over other business, the tendency would be for the smaller firms to also merge and have a fight for a competition. This is to improve their market power and have larger slice of the profits. In effect there is another monopolistic tendency in the market. Although competition is also beneficial to the consumer since they would have many choices with products, and the price would temporarily go down, the competition will most affect smaller and weaker firms. The formation of oligopolies within capitalism will result in the loss of profits for small capitalist directing the profit to Big Business. For this reasons, small and medium sized businesses ends up detesting Big Business and will be blaming the government for unfair and unequal treatment of trade (Mattick, 1974). In conclusion, the capitalists always have the tendency to use monopoly power so they can manipulate the price, the quality and quantity of the commodities. There is no real opportunity for smaller firms when the trade is being ruled by the oligopolistic and monopolistic big businesses. Although there are few advantages with competition, the smaller firms are always outside the room full of opportunities. What they lack is the power to push the big blockade blocking their road to profiteering because of the giants in the trade. The answer to the question now would absolutely be, Yes. Free Trade against Ptotectionism? What is a Free trade and what is Protectionism? Free trade is defined as a market model in which trade in goods and services between or within countries flow freely by government to government laws and restrictions. Included on the restrictions are taxes (tariffs) and other non-tariff trade barriers. On the opposite side is Protectionism. Protectionism is the economic policy of controlling trade between nations or countries such as imposing high tariffs on imported goods, restrictive quotas and other government regulations made to discourage imports from other countries. It also includes anti-dumping laws to protect local industries from a certain foreign nation who could take-over the competition especially in business. Some people call protectionism as â€Å"fair trade† and it may sound alluring at first. Some supporters of protectionism agree that keeping out foreign commodities will save domestic jobs and give a chance for jobs to recover and enrich themselves. It will also sustain trade deficits as well. But are these claims have enough economic basis? Protectionism in effect raises tariffs and imposes quotas on the volume of commodities the government allows to come into the country. Although tariffs is one of the major financial resources of a country, such laws restriction control the choice of consumers to have freedom of choice as well as it also opens job to the trade. According to the US Department of Labor’s statistics, eight jobs are getting lost compared to one job saved in a protected industry due to protectionism Let us give an example, in Japan the government was protecting their own farmers against the influx of imported rice from other countries but in return they are paying five times more as compared with the rice in the world market. Even the European and U. S. consumers are paying more than double the price of their own commodities on certain products as compared to price in the world market take for example agricultural products such as sugar. When the U. S. Semiconductor Trade Pact pressured the Japanese to cut back production and exportation of their computer memory chips, the result was a worldwide shortage of this parts and the eventual rise of demand and short of supply. Eventually, this has caused price increase and the technology was badly hurt by such restriction. The laws of protectionism force you to pay more on taxes on foreign and imported commodities but also increase your domestic taxes as well. This happens when governments enlarge their Customs Department Bureaucracies to guard and enforce rules with trade restrictions. So if there is no benefit for protectionism, why is it being imposed and who gains from it? Those who gain specially from it are usually groups with their special interest. Such as big corporations, unions, and farmer’s groups whom they want to command higher prices as much as getting higher wages. Such groups are thought to have special political and influential clout to politicians which pass laws favorable to their counterpart. Who are the losers with protectionism? The answer would be very clear the people and their government. Then what are the benefits of a free trade? Substantially, all countries benefits from free trade. In the US, every agreement within the free trade must be checked and balanced critically. At present, the U. S. economy is being augmented by more than $12 trillion in gross income from tree trade. American exports in the 2005 has totaled to an estimated of $1. 2 trillion. Jobs that are connected with production of goods for export are 13 to 18 percent higher. The free trade policies have made competition today on a higher level in the open market. This led to better innovation and better products, higher salaries, new markets and more savings for the employees and the government. Free trade has been bolstering America’s high standard of living and there would be more opportunities and income if trade restrictions could be alleviated further. For the past 50 years, trade liberalization has made an extra $9,000 per year for each American household according to the study made by The Institute for International Economics. The relaxation of regulations by the North Atlantic Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the Uruguay Round of the WTO—the two major agencies that impose agreements between nations has generated an annual additional benefits of $1,300–$2,000 for the standard American family of four. In conclusion to this, freer trade facilitates more goods and services to reach consumers at lower prices, providing families additional income which they can use to buy other consumer goods. It does not only help families but helps to widen global freedom, follows international law, and provide economic development especially on poor or third world countries. The World Bank also reported in 1990 that the per capita real income is three times bigger in developing countries that has opened their markets to free trade or loosen up strict regulations on certain imported products. Freer trade and market reforms have lifted more than 500 million people from poverty for the last 25 years. This in every opinion is enough to agree on trade liberalization rather than stayed embrace with the so called â€Å"fair trade† and remained stocked from a world full of opportunities (Markheim, 2007).

Evolution of Smart Homes

Evolution of Smart Homes I. Introduction Smart homes, the next gigantic leap in the field of home automation, have become an emerging research field in last few decades. Research on smart homes has been gradually moving towards application of ubiquitous computing, tackling issues on device heterogeneity and interoperability. A smart home adjusts its function to the inhabitants need according to the information it collects from inhabitants, the computation system and the context [1]. By 2050, approximately 20% of the world population will be at least 60 years old [2]. This age group is more likely to suffer from long-term chronic diseases and will face difficulties in living independently. According to World Health Organization (WHO), 650 million people live with disabilities around the world [3].The most common causes of disability include chronic diseases such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease and cancer; injuries due to road traffic crashes, conflicts, falls, landmines, mental impairments, birth defects, malnutrition, HIV/AIDS and other communicable diseases. It is not possible and logical to support all these patients in the medical center or nursing homes for an uncertain period of time. The solution is to accommodate health care services and assistive technologies in their home environment which is the main objective of smart homes. Sensors, multimedia devices and physiological equipments are core components to perceive information from home environment Infrared (IR) sensors, pressure sensors, magnetic contacts, passive and active Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags are used to track inhabitant location detection. Electrocardiogram (ECG), photoplethysmograph(PPG), ,temperature, spirometry, galvanic skin response, colorimetry and pulse measurement equipments are used to get physiological information from the patient. Camera and microphones provide audiovisual response from home user. Inhabitant can access the system through display panel. Power line communication protocols are widely used for the connectivity of home appliances. Public telecommunication network with voice and text messaging service is involved to provide telecare facility from remote location. Videoconferencing is used as an interactive communication media between caregiver and the client. TCP/IP protocols of Ethernet network provide data connectivity for local and remote sites and locations. Ethernet protocols are also used to connect health-monitoring equipments and to provide data repository service. Algorithms from machine learning, data compression, statistics and artificial intelligent are employed to predict user behavior, detect activities of daily life (ADL) and location. C4.5 algorithm from machine learning is utilized to build spatiotemporal context of user. C4.5 algorithm is developed by Quinlan in 1993 which classify the data to construct a decision tree according to data attributes [47].Active LeZi from data compression algorithms is used to predict inhabitants next behavior. Active LeZi by Gopalratnam et al..in 2007 builds a decision tree utilizing similar methodology of LZ78 data compression algorithm and predict next event using Prediction by Partial Matching (PPM) algorithm[22].Statistical predictive algorithms like Bayesian filtering, dynamic Bayesian network algorithms classify the information and recognize ADL of home client[34][41][44]. Different flavors of AI algorithms extended for smart home data processing. Markov model, Hidden Markov model, Artificial Neur al Network can detect the living pattern of user and can also predict the user [7][13][14][38]. Fuzzy Logic is used for home appliance control [36]. Smart home is mainly dedicated to provide health care, safety, security and monitoring service for patient and elderly. The house is equipped with sensors, cameras to track people and can trigger an alarm to a remote heath care service provider in the case of emergency. Sophisticated physiological devices monitor heart rate, blood pressure, body temperature, ECG record and the patient is being observed from a distance location. Telecommunication service is used for communicating with service provider, relatives or neighbor and as a redundant acknowledgement method from the patient. For home comfort system, lighting, heating, doors, windows and home appliances are automatically controlled by ambient intelligence of smart home. Smart home also has significant contribution towards energy conservation by integration of energy meter with smart home [4]. Home automation is the initial state of smart home where electronic technologies are used to provide an easy access to household devices. Rapid development of sensor technology accelerated the growth of smart home that involved more data processing. Improvement of information and communication technology make possible to develop easy and cost effective methods for data repository and exchange. Smart home is a growing concept, efficient and lower cost solutions for general people are the main idea to promote it. II. Smart Home defination Smart home is an extension of modern electronic, information and communication technologies. The main objective of smart home research is to provide smartness to a dwelling facility for comfort, healthcare, security and energy conservation. Remote monitoring system is a common component of health smart home where telecommunication and web technologies are used to provide quick and proper medication to the patient from specialized assistance centre. The first formal definition of smart home was published by Intertek in 2003, which was involved to Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) smart-homes project in UK [5]. According to Intertek a smart home is a dwelling incorporating a communications network that connects the key electrical appliances and services, and allows them to be remotely controlled, monitored or accessed. A home needs three things to make it smart: Internal network wire, cable, wireless Intelligent control gateway to manage the systems Home automation products within the homes and links to services and systems outside the home III. Review of Smart Homes Smart homes projects are being conducted for last several decades and they convey different ideas, functions and utilities. It is growing to different brunches of specialization focusing the interest of the researchers and user requirements and expectations. This article is a study of the evolution of smart home according to time. Adaptive Control of Home Environment (ACHE) system is developed by Mozer in 1998 in USA. ACHE monitors user device usage pattern utilizing different types of sensors and builds an adaptive inferential engine for neural network to control temperature, heating and lighting. ACHE can control three main components of a home while trying to maximize user comfort and conserve energy [7].ACHE is one of the early smart home projects which is able to partially automate home environment via controlling lighting, temperature and heating components. CarerNet is an architectural model of integrated and intelligent telecare system proposed by Williams et al. in 1998. Its core components are sensor set, a sensor bus, intelligent monitoring system and a control unit. ECG, photoplethysmograph, spirometry, temperature, galvanic skin response, colorimetry, and pulse measurement tools used to collect physiological data. The communication network within the clients local environment is an integration of HomeLAN and Body Area Network (BAN) which is responsible to carry real-time data, event data, command and control data. It has a distributed intelligence system in the form of smart sensors, smart therapy units, body-hub, Local Intelligence Unit (LIU) and Clients Healthcare Record (CHR). Home emergency alarm system, community health information and ambulatory monitoring service can be provided by the system. [8]. CarerNet is an abstract model of health smart home and interconnecting components. No prototype of the model has been developed . Only a hypothetical case study is of an individual who had undergone brain surgery after suffering from a subarachnoid is discussed. Barnes et al. in 1998 have evaluated life style monitoring data of elderly using infrastructure of British Telecom and Anchor Trust in England. The system detects inhabitants movement using IR sensors and magnetic contacts on the entrance of the doors. To measure temperature it uses a temperature sensor in the main living area. An alarm activation system is developed which detects abnormal behavior and communicates to remote telecare control center, the clients and their carers[9]. The researchers presented a lower cost solution for smart telecare. The limitation of the system is it can identify only abnormal sleeping duration, unexpected inactivity, uncomfortable home temperature and fridge usage disorder. Moreover, it uses a special new telecom protocol named No Ring Calling which demands modifying existing telecom protocols. TERVA is a health monitoring system developed in Finland by Korhonen et al.(1998). TERVA processes physiological information like blood pressure, heart beat rate, body temperature, body weight to draw graphical representation of wellness condition of the subject[10].Research goal of the TERVA system is to develop a real time visual monitoring system but it is unable to provide long-term trend of certain physiological information. It cannot detect physiological problems and no assistive service is deployed to provide health care. The intelligent home (IHome) project at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst has developed an intelligent environment (Lesser et al.1999) IHome is a simulated environment designed with Multi Agent Survivability Simulator (MASS) and a Java Agent Framework (JAF) as tools to evaluate agent behavior and their coordination. The focus of the project is to model agent interactions and task interactions so that the agent can evaluate the tradeoff between robustness and efficiency [11].IHome is a simulation only solution, the project never build a practical smart home to evaluate their model. The Aware Home Research at the Georgia Institute of Technology developed a smart home, which equipped with monitoring facilities to study human behavior (Kidd et al. 1999). To build a model of user behavior pattern, it uses smart floor to sense footsteps. Hidden Markov models, simple feature-vector averaging and neural network algorithms are applied on these data to create and evaluate behavioral model [12]. The aim of the project is to study user behavior, which is the primary stage of smart home research. The project never developed home intelligence which is a big shortfall of the research. The EasyLiving project at Microsoft Research based on intelligent environment to track multiple residents using distributed image-processing system (Krumm et al. 2000). The system can identify residents through active badge system. Measurements are used to define geometric relationship between the people, devices, places and things [13][14].The system is workable in single room only and can track upto three peoples simultaneously. SELF (Sensorized Environment for LiFe), is an intelligent environment, which enables a person to maintain his or her health through self-communication (Nishida et al. 2000). SELF observes the persons behavior with distributed sensors invisibly embedded in the daily environment, extracts physiological parameters from it, analyzes the parameters, and accumulates the results. The accumulated results are used for reporting useful information to maintain the persons health. The researchers constructed a model room for SELF consisted of a bed with pressure sensor array, a ceiling lighting dome with a microphone and a washstand with display[15].SELF describes a self-assessment system of human health but measuring only respiratory system and sleeping disorder, which is not sufficient to monitor health condition. The ENABLE project was set up in 2001 to measure the impact of assistive technology on the patient suffering from mild or moderate dementia (Adlam et al. 2004). The researcher installed two devices (cooker and night light) in the apartment of several patients in different locations to evaluate the efficiency of the system [16]. The research scope is limited to only two household devices but to assist this type of patient the whole house must possess some kind of intelligence. Health Integrated Smart Home Information System (HIS) is an experimental platform for home based monitoring (Virone.et al. 2002). IR sensors are used to track inhabitant activities and the information is transmitted via Controller Area Network (CAN) to a local computer. The system generates alerts according to some predefine zones [17]. The research is only limited to single inhabitant monitoring. In 2002, GuillÃÆ' ©n et al. developed a system composed of two parts: home station (HS) and caregiver medical center (CMC) connected via integrated service digital network (ISDN) backbone. The home station is equipped with vital signs recording module to monitor physiological data like blood pressure, temperature, ECG, pulse oximetry. Caregiver medical center is like a call center designed specially with patient monitoring software. An interactive communication system between home and caregiver center is developed using videoconferencing technology [18]. Figure 1 shows functional modules of multimedia smart home. The system requires high Internet bandwidth for videoconferencing, which needs expensive equipments and high maintenance cost. Functional module of multimedia platform [18] At University of Tokyo, Noguchi et al (2002) designed an intelligent room to support daily life of the inhabitant. The system has three main components: data collection, data processing and integration of processed data. The system learns current state of environment from sensors attached to bed, floor, table and switches. A summarization algorithm is used to track any changes in the system. The algorithm segments the collected sensory data at the points where sensor outputs changes drastically (i.e. pressure data appears suddenly or switch sensors are changed). It labels the segment with the room state. It joins a state of each segment to quantize the accumulated data and ties up the changed situation. The algorithm also tries to eliminate and reduces situations that changes slightly [19].The proposed summarization algorithm can detect user activities which is tested for single room only. No home automation method discussed utilizing the algorithm. MavHome (Managing an Adaptive Versatile Home) first introduced by Das et al. in 2002 at the University of Texas, Arlington [20]. Figure 2 describes MavHome architecture in brief. MavHome use multi disciplinary technologies: artificial intelligent, multimedia technology, mobile computing and robotics. It is divided into four abstract layers: physical, communication, information and decision. X10 protocol is used to control and monitor more than sixty X10 devices plugged into the home electric wiring system [21]. Active LeZi algorithm is developed that makes a decision tree based on kth order Markov model and predict next action calculating probability of all actions applying prediction by partial matching method [22]. Although MovHome utilize algorithms to make accurate prediction and decision, it only predicts the behavior of single inhabitant [23]. concrete architecture of MavHome[21] The Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center on Technology for Successful aging (RERC-Tech-Aging) at the University of Florida introduced House of Matilda (Helel et al. 2003, 2005)[24].The home is inhabited by a dummy called Mutilda. The main aim of this research is to perceive user location using ultrasound technology. After two years, in 2005 they designed the second generation of this home named GatorTech'[25]. GatorTech is actually integration of smart device with sensors and actuators to optimize the comfort and safety of older peoples. The system is not user friendly because it requires wearable device for user tracking. In 2004, Mihailidis et al. developed a computer vision system in pervasive healthcare systems. The vision system consists of three agents: sensing, planning and prompting. Statistics and physics based methods of segmenting skin color in digital images are used for face and hand tracing [26]. Only hand and face tracing is not sufficient to make an efficient smart home system, the system should include body tracking and hand gesture reorganization. Multimedia Laboratories, NTT DoCoMo Inc. in Japan, has developed a system for modeling and recognizing personal behavior utilizing sensors and Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tag (Isoda et al. 2004)[27]. C4.5 algorithm is used to construct decision tree from the data obtained from the sensors and RFID tags. The users behavioral context at any given moment is obtained by matching the most recently detected states with previously defined task models. The system is an effective way for acquiring users spatiotemporal context but no intelligent system is developed for home appliances control. Andoh et al. in 2004 developed a networked non-invasive health monitoring system analyzing breath rate, heart rate, snoring and body movement. Researchers adopted Ethernet network for breath monitoring system implementation. The system can estimate sleep stages analyzing data using the algorithm developed for the purpose [28]. The system cannot summarize long term observation of patients sleeping disorder. In 2005, Masuda et al. have developed a health monitoring arrangement using existing telecommunication system for home visit rehabilitation therapists. Researchers used an air filled mat to measure heartbeat and respiratory condition. When the patient lies on the air mat, his heartbeat and respiratory movement cause significant change in air pressure inside the mat, which is measured by pressure sensor and analyzed by appropriate filtering process [29]. The interesting part of the project is the usage of an air bag as monitoring equipment but its limitation is, it can only measure heart rate and respiratory condition. In 2005, Ma et al emphasized on context awareness to provide automatic services in smart home. They used case-based reasoning (CBR) to provide more appropriate services. CBR technique relies on previous interactions and experiences to find solutions for current problems. The system can adopt any manual adjustment done by modifying case data [30].This is the initial state of the project where few scenarios like AC, TV, lamp interaction is evaluated. Their future plan is to add more contexts and enrich the features of case tables. The House_n group at MIT designed PlaceLab a new living laboratory for the study of ubiquitous technologies in home environment (Intille et al. 2005). PlaceLab deployed with numerous wire, light, pressure, temperature water, gas, current sensors with video and audio devices to create vast amount of real life data from single volunteers as well as couples [31].The goal of the project is to study human behavior, influence of technology on the people and how technology can be used to simplify user interaction with home appliances. Their main contribution is an open online database of smart home sensor events and a well featured analyzing software [48].Researchers never implemented the study to build an autonomous intelligent home. Yamazaki (2006) constructed Ubiquitous Home, a real-life test bed, for home context-aware service. It is a housing test facility for the creation of useful new home services by linking devices, sensors, and appliances across data networks. Active and passive RFID tags located above the ceiling and at the entrance of the door are used to detect and recognize inhabitants. Pressure sensors are used to track user movement and furniture. The system is occupied with plasma panels, liquid crystal display and microphone for better interaction with the users. A network robot is employed to perform certain home services. Researchers concluded that the goal of smart home is not to design an automated home but to develop an environment using interface technologies between human and the system [32].Although, the researchers installed enough sensors and interfacing devices , the system is only sensible to few task automations like TV program selection, cooking recipe display and forgotten property service. Ha et al. (2006) presents a sensor-based indoor location-aware system that can identify residents location. Researchers used an array of Pyroelectric Infrared (PIR) sensor and proposed a framework of smart home location aware system. An algorithm is developed to process the information collected from PIR sensors for inhabitant location detection. Their next step is to design an algorithm to determine location and trajectory of multiple residents simultaneously [33]. The project in dedicated to user location detection system which is an essential part of smart home. No system is developed to provide intelligence to the house employing user location. In 2007, Rahal et al. at DOMUS laboratory, Universit ´e de Sherbrooke, Canada, utilized Bayesian Filtering methods to determine location of the inhabitants. Bayes filters are efficiently used to estimate a persons location using a set of fixed sensors. In this method, the last known position and the last sensor event are both used to estimate a new location. The algorithm based on Bayesian filtering shows a mean localization accuracy of 85% [34].This project also deals with user location detection algorithm, no home automation is developed using the processed information. De Silva et al. (2007) have implemented an audiovisual retrieval and summarization system utilizing multimedia technology for human behavior tracking. Using a large number of cameras a hierarchical clustering of audio and video handover used to create personalized video clips. An adaptive algorithm is used for complete and compact summary of the video retrieved. Basic audio analysis methods are applied for accurate audio segmentation and source localization. An interface allowed users to incorporate their knowledge into the search process and obtain more accurate results for their queries [35].The system can track people, extract key frame, localize sound source, detect lighting change but cannot distinguished different people. At Tampere University of Technology, Vainio et al.(2008) developed a proactive fuzzy home-control system. An adaptive algorithm applied to evaluate the test on obtained results. The goal of the research is to help elderly people live independently at home. Developed system can recognize routines and also recognize deviations from routines. The system can provide information to caregivers about living rhythm, sleeping disorders, and medicine taking of inhabitant [36]. But the system works sensibly only for lighting control. In 2008, Swaminathan et al. proposed an object reorganization system using visual image localization and registration. Appliances are first registered in the image processing system. According to the voice command of the user, appropriate object is selected using an environmental map [27].It is actually a home automaton project using speech reorganization to receive user command and commands are executed to the objects which already known to the system. Growing Self-Organizing Maps (GSOM) used a self-adaptive neural network to detect and recognize activities of daily life addressed by Zheng et al in 2008 [38] [39]. The GSOM follows the basic principle of the Kohonen self-organizing map with a special focus on adaptive architecture. The learning process of the GSOM is started by generating an initial network composed by four neurons on a 2-dimensional grid, followed by iteratively presenting training data samples. The system is tested in single room apartment for about two weeks where it can recognized user pattern of 22 distinct activities. Like other Self Adaptive Neural Networks (SANN), the system is depends on several learning parameters to be determined in advance such as initial learning rate and the size of the initial neighborhood. Other machine learning method must be utilized in parallel to determine optimum parameter for best performance. In 2008, Perumal et al. from Institute of Advanced Technology of University Putra Malaysia (UPM) have presented a design and implemented Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) based residential engagement for smart home systems appliances control [40]. An appliance control module based on SOAP and web services developed to solve the interoperation of various home appliances in smart home systems. Fifteen feedback based control channels implemented with residential management system through Web Services. If the residential management system experiences server downtime, the home appliances can still be controlled using alternate control mechanism with GSM network via SMS Module locally and remotely. This system offers a complete, bi-directional real-time control and monitoring of smart home systems. No security mechanism is used to protect the web server from unauthorized access. Virone et al. present a dozens of statistical behavioral patterns obtained from an activity monitoring pilot study. The pilot study examined home activity rhythms of 22 residents in an assisted living environment with four case studies. Established behavioral patterns have been captured using custom software based on a statistical predictive algorithm that models circadian activity rhythms (CARs) and their deviations (Virone et al. 2008). The system cannot differentiate multiple inhabitants [41]. Yoo et al. examined web-based implementation possibility of a central repository to integrate the biosignal data arrives from various types of devices in a remote smart home. Medical waveform description Format Encoding Rule (MFER) standard is followed for communicating and storing the biosignal data in ubiquitous home health monitoring system. The web-based technology allowed ubiquitous access to the data from remote location. The paper presents a common data format for all types of sensor (Yoo et al. 2008)[42].Figure 3 describes functional architecture of web based data retrieval system. Information security, which is a burning issue for any web based system is not considered in this research. A web-based architecture for transferring the measured biosignal data from the u-House to the remote central repository. A snow-flake data model is designed by Zhang et al. in 2008 to represent the activities data in smart homes [43]. Sensor data are stored in the homeML structure. A new algorithm is proposed on the prediction of class labels for variable person and activities of daily life (ADL) indicating who is doing what, given the observed episode and time information. Accuracy is calculated as the proportion of the number of correctly predicted class over the total number of episodes in the evaluation dataset. The learning output in the form of a joint probability distribution is also assessed by the distance to the true underlying probability distribution, using the Euclidean metric. The smaller the distance is, the closer the learned model to the true situation. The algorithm is based on probabilistic distribution and able to predict ADL of more than one inhabitant. The result given is based on simulated data and the example shows only one task identification (à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‹Å"making drink activi ties). In 2008, Park et al. proposed a method for recognizing ADL at multiple levels of details by combining multi-view computer vision and RFID based direct sensor [44]. A hierarchical recognition scheme is proposed by building a dynamic Bayesian network (DBN) that encompasses both coarse-level and fine-level ADL recognition. Their methodology combines the two tracking technology. The system requires wearable RFID tag which is not comfortable for users. Rashidi et al. developed CASAS at Washington State University in 2008. CASAS is an adaptive smart home that utilizes machine-learning techniques to discover patterns in user behaviour and to automatically mimic these patterns. The goal is to keep the resident in control of the automation. Users can provide feedback on proposed automation activities, modify the automation policies, and introduce new requests. In addition, CASAS can discover changes in residents behaviour patterns automatically. Frequent and Periodic Activity Miner (FPAM) algorithm mines this data to discover frequent and periodic activity patterns. These activity patterns are modelled by their Hierarchal Activity Model (HAM), which utilizes the underlying temporal and structural regularities of activities to achieve a satisfactory automation policy. User can provide feedback on proposed automation activities, modify the automation policies, and introduce new requests [45].To make a system more interactive smart home s hould be equipped with voice reorganization facilities which is absent in this system. Raad et al. developed a cost-effective user-friendly telemedicine system to serve the elderly and disabled people. An architecture of telemedicine support in smart home that consists of web and telecom interface is considered in their research (Raad et al. 2008)[46]. This system also suffers from information security issues. PRIMA (Perception, recognition and integration for interactive environments) research group of the LIG laboratory at the INRIA Grenoble research center in France has defined a model for contextual learning in smart homes (2009). The authors developed a 3D smart environment consisting cameras, a microphone array and headset microphones for situation modeling. It relies on 3D video tracking and role detection process regarding activities of the person. Roles are learned by support vector machines (SVM). It is also capable to learn speed of the inhabitant and distance to the interacting object. Proposed system can identify situations like introduction, presentation, aperitif, game and siesta. Its error rate is very high [49]. Kim et al. developed a pyroelectric infrared (PIR) sensor based indoor location aware system (PILAS) in 2009.The system uses an array of PIR sensors attached with the ceiling and detects inhabitants location by combining overlapped detected areas. PIR sensors construct a virtual map of resident location transition. To improved accuracy, they applied Bayesian classifier using a multivariate Gaussian probability density function to determine the location of an inhabitant. PILAS is unable to detect multiple residents [50]. Wang et al. have developed a smart home monitoring and controlling system(2009). The system can be controlled from remote locations through an embedded controller. They have developed different GUI for mobile devices and PCs. Each device has a unique address. A new command format to control the devices is introduced. It is a complex system and not compatible to previous smart homes architectures [51]. Yongping et al. have developed an embedded web server to control equipments using Zigbee protocol (2009). For this purpose they used S3C2410 microprocessor which was programmed with Linux 2.6 kernel. To provider online access a small web server (only 60 Kbytes) named Boa is installed. An interface had also been designed to communicate with Zigbee module (MC13192).The system do possess any type of intelligence [52]. Hussain el al. have developed inhabitant identification system using wireless sensor network (WSN) and RFID sensors (2009). The system can identify user location by the intensity of the Radio Signal Strength Indicator (RSSI) of WSN. A person is recognized by attached a RFID tag. The combined reading of RSSI signal and RFID receiver can successfully identify specific location of a resident in the home. The system is limited to single person tracking [53]. At Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) in Taiwan, Chen et al.

Galileo: Scientist, Scholar, Rebel Essay -- essays research papers

Seventeenth-century European study was controlled by two powerful forces: the Roman Catholic Church, headed by the Pope, and ancient philosophy dominated by the 2000-year-old ideas of the Greek philosopher, Aristotle. The Church had an overwhelming influence on the lives of most Europeans. During Galileo’s time one in twelve people living in Rome was either a cleric or a nun.1 The Church forbid any teaching that deviated from what was taught in the Bible. To enforce this control, the Church set up the Inquisition. Galileo was targeted by the Inquisition for his observations and experiments. 2 Because his teachings differed from the socially accepted ideas of Aristotle, the Inquisition believed he should be persecuted. Even though Galileo’s observations were much more factual than Aristotle’s and, more important, backed up by experiments and the use of the telescope, he was still sentenced to house arrest for life.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Galileo Galilei was born on February 15, 1564, in Pisa Italy.3 Galileo was born into a family considered nobility, and his father, Vincenzo Galilei, was an accomplished musician.4 Galileo was tutored privately and also educated by his father until the age of eleven, when his family moved to Florence and sent him to a Jesuit monastery to study medicine.5 Three years after his son began school, Vincenzo was surprised to learn Galileo had decided to become a monk. Somewhat angered, his father withdrew him from the monastery, and Galileo continued his high school education in Florence.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   At age seventeen Galileo began college at the University of Pisa, where he reluctantly studied medicine. 6 Throughout his first term attending the university, Galileo became more interested in mathematics than medicine. A court mathematician, by the name of Ostillo Ricci, noticed Galileo in his lectures.7 Impressed with Galileo’s knowledge, he urged Galileo change his major to mathematics. Against his father’s wishes, Galileo changed courses, and by the end of his first term he was a mathematics undergraduate.8   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Galileo made his first important discovery while attending the University of Pisa. Galileo noticed a swinging lamp above him during a church sermon. Extremely bored, Galileo conducted an experiment to see if the amount of time in between each swing was the same. Using hi... ...i. School of Mathmatics and St. Andrews, Scotland, August 1995; available from http://www.history.mcs.standrews.ac.uk/history/mathmatics/galileo.html;Internet. 4 Ibid. 5 Ibid. 6 Ibid. 7 Jack Meadows, The Great Scientists. Oxford University; New York, 1987, p. 35. 8 Deborah Hitzeroth and Sharon Heerbor, Galileo Galilei. Lucent Books Inc; California, 1992, p.15. 9 Ibid., p.16. 10 J.V. Field, Galileo Galilei. School of Mathmatics and St. Andrews, Scotland, August 1995; available from http://www.history.mcs.standrews.ac.uk/history/mathmatics/galileo.html;Internet. 11 Ibid. 12 Galileo Galilei- Astrology. Available from http://www.astrology.about.com/library/weekly/aa0zz00b. 13 Ibid. 14 Ibid. 17 Ibid. 18 Jack Meadows, The Great Scientists. Oxford University; New York, 1987, p.41. 19 Deborah Hitzeroth and Sharon Heerbor, Galileo Galilei. Lucent Books Inc; California, 1992, p.24. 20 Jack Meadows, The Great Scientists. Oxford University; New York, 1987, p.44. 21 Ibid., p.45. 22 Giorgio De Santillan, The Crimes of Galileo. Time Inc; University of Chicago Press, 1962, p.185. 23 Ibid., p.257. 24 Ibid. 25 Jack Meadows, The Great Scientists. Oxford University; New York, 1987, p.48. 26 Ibid

Advantage of Using Mobile

Health Effects Electromagnetic radiation from cell phones may cause health problems. Rigorous studies are being carried out to know about the negative effects of cell phones. Sleep deprivation, stress and brain problems have been linked to overuse of cell phones, and are considered as the possible effects of cell phone radiation. Some studies have reported that cell phone usage can trigger male infertility symptoms. But nothing has been proved yet, though we can lessen mobile use to some extent. Children Suffer Children have been found to have some worrisome effects of mobile phone usage.Since they have weaker immune system, thinner skin and developing nervous system, waves generated from mobile phones can harm their body cells. It has been found that children can absorb radio waves to a far greater extent than adults. Legal Issues Mobile phones come with cameras and hence this has led to hundreds of thousands of cases pending in courts about privacy problems. There have been instanc es in the past, in countries like Saudi Arabia, Japan, Korea, where a ban was imposed on camera phones, making it a strict rule to sell only those cell phones that come with an appreciable click sound!Moreover, crime rate has also increased with miscreants like robbers and terrorists pursuing their nefarious schemes through mobile phones. Driving and Mobile Phones If not anything, this is certainly one of the most dangerous disadvantages of cell phones. In the US, cell phone and driving have become a major concern among traffic officials. The seriousness of this issue in the eyes of the federal government was highlighted when a US court in 2009, imposed a whopping million dollar fine for talking on phone while driving, on a Texan driver.It is the highest fine imposed in the world, for someone using mobile phone while driving. Many accidents can be averted if people are cautious, and avoid cell phone usage while driving. Advantages and Disadvantages of Mobile Phones in Business Here are some advantages of mobile phones in business. †¢It's easier to contact employees, staff members and clients. Mobile phone is useful in sales and marketing business. †¢For business people, mobile number is the first thing their clients/customers ask, in case, they're interested in the business idea/product. †¢In business, you can't meet everyone.With cell phones you can contact the person and even talk as per his time and convenience. Moreover, you can have more time at your disposal to talk. †¢Business people can check emails, keep reminders about meetings, conferences and record details of business etc. even in small gadgets like mobile phones. †¢With inexpensive phone plans for corporate firms, business networking has been redefined. Mobile phones come with several disadvantages in business. They are as follows. †¢Business people can often feel stressed due to constant calls. This is true for telemarketers. Even consumers get baffled due to variou s calls.Some employers who give the facility of cell phones to their employees are often afraid of potential costs that the firm has to bear. But then, these days, call rates are pretty inexpensive and people avoid using business sim cards for their personal usage. Hence, this disadvantage is not a big concern. †¢In general, landline numbers still indicate authenticity and if you glance around, every large business group will, for sure, have a landline number. For an effective business firm, landline number is important. Any change that transforms our society (for the good or bad, both) effect every age group.Several schools of thoughts have raised their voice for various advantages of mobile phones for students. Being in touch with parents and for seeking help during emergencies, are some of the advantages of mobile phones in school but more than that, I don't think students must be allowed to carry cell phones in schools. Cell phones for kids: pros and cons are many, and the school management and parents must consider properly before allowing kids to carry mobile phones in school. Studies have reported that mobile phones have been used by students for cheating in tests, arranging drug deals, thereby causing distraction in studies.Till today, cell phone use in schools is a highly debated topic. This was all about the advantages and disadvantages of mobile phones. Certainly, too much of everything is bound to have negative implications. Since the last few years, cell phone radiations have been said to be a prominent problem and as the number of cell phone users are increasing day by day, medical threats are bound to increase. While we can wait and watch for more medical and scientific evidences supporting medical concerns about mobile usage, as an individual, we can try to restrict mobile phone usage.

Word Choice Envelop vs. Envelope - Proofeds Writing Tips

Word Choice Envelop vs. Envelope - Proofeds Writing Tips Word Choice: Envelop vs. Envelope Some words look or sound unhelpfully similar to others, which can be confusing if you speak English as a second language or rely heavily on automatic spellcheckers, which don’t pick up errors of this type. The terms â€Å"envelop† and â€Å"envelope,† for instance, are one letter apart in spelling, yet  confusing the two would affect the clarity of your writing. But what exactly is the distinction between these terms? Envelop (To Enclose or Enfold) The word â€Å"envelop† is a verb meaning â€Å"to completely cover or enclose† something: It’s cold outside, so I’ll envelop myself in a comforter and think warm thoughts. The bridge was enveloped in fog, giving the scene a creepy look. In military circles, â€Å"envelop† is also a word for a flanking maneuver, though you shouldn’t need to use this on a regular basis unless you’re in a combat situation! Envelope (A Paper Container) Although similar, â€Å"envelope† (with an â€Å"e†) is a noun, typically referring to the flat paper container used for sending letters (until email came along). (Photo: U.S. Post Office Department) After slipping the card into the envelope, she sealed it and handed it to the carrier. â€Å"Envelope† also has a few technical meanings, such as the membrane of a virus or the limits within which an aircraft remains operational. This latter sense of â€Å"envelope† is actually how â€Å"pushing the envelope† came to mean going beyond expectations, as flight tests were designed to â€Å"push the envelope† of the aircraft being tested. Envelop or Envelope? Despite their similarity in spelling, â€Å"envelop† and â€Å"envelope† are importantly distinct; most notably, one is a verb (i.e., an action word), the other a noun (i.e., a naming word). As long as you remember this difference it should be simple to tell them apart. â€Å"Envelop† will always describe an action, while an â€Å"envelope† will always name something (usually a papery container): Envelop (verb) = To cover or enclose Envelope (noun) = A papery container for mail

The Factors of Poverty essays

The Factors of Poverty essays What is poverty? Every day we are exposed to some nature of poverty. There is no one definition to define poverty because poverty can be in reference to anything. Generally, poverty is referenced to being extremely poor or lacking general necessities required to live each day. Examples may include water, food, and shelter. Each view of poverty has its own opinion and explanation. Poverty affects all aspects of life, even the ones who are fortunate to have everything they need. Poverty is either blamed on the individual or the system, which we refer to as the government. A couple of things one should take into consideration when referring to poverty is the causes and effects of poverty, the types of poverty, and the people mostly affected by poverty. Although poverty is well overlooked, the less fortunate should be taken into consideration rather than overlooked or set apart as an outcast to society. There are two categories of poverty. The first category of poverty is case poverty. Case poverty is defined as something an individual does or lacks which causes them to be poor. For example, drug addicts and alcoholics who are living in poverty are in that state because of the habit they would rather support. On the other hand, those living in poverty due to a handicap or mental problem are in that state because that disables their ability to work. The second category is insular poverty. This is brought about to a particular group living in a particular area and is solely based upon environmental factors. Insular poverty could exist in the slums of the city, and this result from lack of attention and maintenance from the city. There is a major difference between the two cases of poverty, solely based on who is effected and how. John Kenneth Gilbraith expressed his forethought about these cases of poverty and suggested, The cure of poverty is possible but is not sure that the peop le along with the government see it as an important...