Friday, March 20, 2020
Martin Luther VS John Calvin essays
Martin Luther VS John Calvin essays Although Martin Luther and John Calvin did share some of the same beliefs, they had many factors that boldly differentiated them. The main difference in the teachings of Martin Luther and John Calvin was their outlooks on salvation. Martin Luther believed in salvation through good works, while John Calvin strongly believed in predestination. Martin Luther and John Calvins teachings were also different due to the fact that Martin Luther believed in the separation of the church and state, while John Calvin did not. Despite their differences, they did share the belief that the Catholic Church was at fault and committed obscenities that were unholy, and that should be reformed. Martin Luther believed that one can retrieve salvation through faith and good acts. He basically believed that what you did throughout your life on Earth would determine whether or not you would receive salvation. If you had faith in God, prayed, read the bible, and did good deeds; you would then receive salvation. Therefore, Martin Luther believed that people could make the decision of how they would live their lives, and then depending upon that, God would judge them. Through this, we can infer that Martin Luther was suggesting individualism in this belief because he is saying that men have a say in whether or not they will receive salvation. On the contrary, John Calvin strongly believed in predestination. Predestination was the belief that God had a plan for each and every person at the time of creation. Man had no input on his own salvation. This belief in predestination lead to another one of John Calvins beliefs, which was that men existed either as an elect or a reprobate. An elect was a person who would receive Gods grace, and a reprobate was a person who would not receive Gods grace. The people who were elect simply did not do things that would condemn them, since God had already predetermined that they would be elect and receiv...
Tuesday, March 3, 2020
Modules, Structures, and Classes
Modules, Structures, and Classes There are just three ways to organize a VB.NET application. ModulesStructuresClasses But most technical articles assume that you already know all about them. If youre one of the many who still have a few questions, you could just read past the confusing bits and try to figure it out anyway. And if you have a lot of time, you can start searching through Microsofts documentation: A Module is a portable executable file, such as type.dll or application.exe, consisting of one or more classes and interfaces.A Class statement defines a new data type.The Structure statement defines a composite value type that you can customize. Right, then. Any questions? To be a bit more fair to Microsoft, they have pages and pages (and more pages) of information about all of these that you can wade through. And they have to be as exact as possible because they set the standard. In other words, Microsofts documentation sometimes reads like a law book because it is a law book. But if youre just learning .NET, it can be very confusing! You have to start somewhere. Understanding the three fundamental ways that you can write code in VB.NET is a good place to start. You can write VB.NET code using any of these three forms. In other words, you can create a Console Application in VB.NET Express and write: Module Module1   Sub Main()      MsgBox(This is a Module!)   End SubEnd ModuleClass Class1   Sub Main()      MsgBox(This is a Class)   End SubEnd ClassStructure Struct1   Dim myString As String   Sub Main()      MsgBox(This is a Structure)   End SubEnd Structure This doesnt make any sense as a program, of course. The point is that you dont get a syntax error so its legal VB.NET code. These three forms are the only way to code the queen bee root of all of .NET: the object. The only element that interrupts the symmetry of the three forms is the statement: Dim myString As String. That has to do with a Structure being a composite data type as Microsoft states in their definition. Another thing to notice is that all three blocks have a Sub Main() in them. One of the most fundamental principals of OOP is usually called encapsulation. This is the black box effect. In other words, you should be able to treat each object independently and that includes using identically named subroutines if you want to. Classes Classes are the right place to start because, as Microsoft notes, A class is a fundamental building block of object-oriented programming (OOP). In fact, some authors treat modules and structures as just special kinds of classes. A class is more object oriented than a module because its possible to instantiate (make a copy of) a class but not a module. In other words, you can code ... Public Class Form1   Private Sub Form1_Load( _      ByVal sender As System.Object, _      ByVal e As System.EventArgs) _      Handles MyBase.Load      Dim myNewClass As Class1 New Class1      myNewClass.ClassSub()   End SubEnd Class (The class instantiation is emphasized.) It doesnt matter whether the actual class itself, in this case, ... Public Class Class1   Sub ClassSub()      MsgBox(This is a class)   End SubEnd Class ... is in a file by itself or is part of the same file with the Form1 code. The program runs exactly the same way. (Notice that Form1 is a class too.) You can also write class code that behaves much like a module, that is, without instantiating it. This is called a Shared class. The article Static (that is, Shared) versus Dynamic Types in VB.NET explains this in much more detail. Another fact about classes should also be kept in mind. Members (properties and methods) of the class only exist while the instance of the class exists. The name for this is scoping. That is, the scope of an instance of a class is limited. The code above can be changed to illustrate this point this way: Public Class Form1   Private Sub Form1_Load( _      ByVal sender As System.Object, _      ByVal e As System.EventArgs) _      Handles MyBase.Load      Dim myNewClass As Class1 New Class1      myNewClass.ClassSub()      myNewClass Nothing      myNewClass.ClassSub()   End SubEnd Class When the second myNewClass.ClassSub() statement is executed, a NullReferenceException error is thrown because the ClassSub member doesnt exist. Modules In VB 6, it was common to see programs where most of the code was in a module (A .BAS, file rather than, for instance, in a Form file such as Form1.frm.) In VB.NET, both modules and classes are in .VB files. The main reason modules are included in VB.NET is to give programmers a way to organize their systems by putting code in different places to fine tune the scope and access for their code. (That is, how long members of the module exist and what other code can reference and use the members.) Sometimes, you may want to put code into separate modules just to make it easier to work with. All VB.NET modules are Shared because they cant be instantiated (see above) and they can be marked Friend or Public so they can be accessed either within the same assembly or whenever theyre referenced. Structures Structures are the least understood of the three forms of objects. If we were talking about animals instead of objects, the structure would be an Aardvark. The big difference between a structure and a class is that a structure is a value type and a class is a reference type. What does that mean? Im so glad you asked. A value type is an object that is stored directly in memory. An Integer is a good example of a value type. If you declared an Integer in your program like this ... Dim myInt as Integer 10 ... and you checked the memory location stored in myInt, you would find the value 10. You also see this described as being allocated on the stack. The stack and the heap are simply different ways of managing the use of computer memory. A reference type is an object where the location of the object is stored in memory. So finding a value for a reference type is always a two step lookup. A String is a good example of a reference type. If you declared a String like this ... Dim myString as String This is myString ... and you checked the memory location stored in myString, you would find another memory location (called a pointer - this way of doing things is the very heart of C style languages). You would have to go to that location to find the value This is myString. This is often called being allocated on the heap. The stack and the heap Some authors say that value types arent even objects and only reference types can be objects. Its certainly true that the sophisticated object characteristics like inheritance and encapsulation are only possible with reference types. But we started this whole article by saying that there were three forms for objects so I have to accept that structures are some sort of object, even if theyre non-standard objects. The programming origins of structures go back to file-oriented languages like Cobol. In those languages, data was normally processed as sequential flat files. The fields in a record from the file were described by a data definition section (sometimes called a record layout or a copybook). So, if a record from the file contained: 1234567890ABCDEF9876 The only way you would know that 1234567890 was a phone number, ABCDEF was an ID and 9876 was $98.76 was through the data definition. Structures help you accomplish this in VB.NET. Structure Structure1   VBFixedString(10) Dim myPhone As String   VBFixedString(6) Dim myID As String   VBFixedString(4) Dim myAmount As StringEnd Structure Because a String is a reference type, its necessary to keep the length the same with the VBFixedString attribute for fixed length records. You can find an extended explanation of this attribute and attributes in general in the article Attributes in VB .NET. Although structures are non-standard objects, they do have a lot of capability in VB.NET. You can code methods, properties, and even events, and event handlers in structures, but you can also use more simplified code and because theyre value types, processing can be faster. For example, you could recode the structure above like this: Structure Structure1   VBFixedString(10) Dim myPhone As String   VBFixedString(6) Dim myID As String   VBFixedString(4) Dim myAmount As String   Sub mySub()      MsgBox(This is the value of myPhone: myPhone)   End SubEnd Structure And use it like this: Dim myStruct As Structure1myStruct.myPhone 7894560123myStruct.mySub() Its worth your time to play around with structures a bit and learn what they can do. Theyre one of the odd corners of VB.NET that can be a magic bullet when you need it.
Sunday, February 16, 2020
Identification Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words - 1
Identification - Essay Example This has been reinforced by the fact that some nations that are non-democratic have managed to achieve impressive economic production. Fascism has been successful in a number of countries including Germany as well as Italy and Japan. It is even believed that what is needed to fix the problems facing the world today is; the availability of more information and the systematical analysis of that information. It is even argued that a dictator would help solve the various problems facing the world today by simply applying analysis. This would however require that democratic interferences and tradeoffs not to be applied (Ingram 3). Those who champion such arguments have gone to ask why smart people with the freedom to do what is right under democratic governments have not been able to solve the problems facing us. According to them, what is needed more are resources to do policy analysis. This stand is definitely miss -placed if not totally misguided as the people fronting it because there are so many policy analyses that have been done and are available by both governments and international agencies that are responsible for various sectors. The issue is not little information or lack of policy analysis as thought or fronted in Die Welle, but the problem is the opposite; there is too much information that it is overwhelming to make a policy choice unilaterally. With no clear and universally accepted criterion in place to make those whose interests are not catered for to accept policy that has been made by analysis, it is hard to implement these policies and solve the problems. If this is the problem that dictatorship is supposed to solve then Die Welle is a big joke. Have they considered the civil unrest, the violent opposition and confrontations? Also, no government has the resources to allot to extensive policy analysis (Ingram 8). And, if even if a dictator does this, he or she would in turn affect other operations of government there by creating a whole new probl em while trying to solve one. Furthermore, there has never been a single definition of all problems so that a policy analysis can handle all of them. In addition, there are limitations when it comes to policy making in an analytical manner because it is always fallible, costly, lacking the ability to conclusively resolve conflicts in terms of value and interests. It is therefore impossible to substitute politics with analysis as depicted in Die welle. It is however possible to improve policy making by increasing information and analysis but politics cannot be removed (Ingram 32). This authoritarian myth of Die welle is a misguided one that should not be supported because even states that are not democratic still rely on consent from members of their societies to a certain level. Even if it through coercion as in the case of Hitler in Germany. Federal Systems Federalism is a departure if not a rejection of majoritarian democracy as defined by its principal features or as depicted in the Westminster democracy model (Lijpart 3). Non-mojoritarian democracy is also referred to consensus democracy and can be further divided into federalism and consociationalism. While the two forms of non-majoritatrian democracy do not coincide, they always overlap to an extent that is significant. Also, it is important to note that they cover such areas such as balance when it comes to legislative relations, sharing of executive power, representation that is proportional,
Sunday, February 2, 2020
Managing change, Qatar Telecommunications - OOREDOO case study
Managing change, Qatar Telecommunications - OOREDOO - Case Study Example From the research it can be comprehended that there are some of the changes that calls for organisations to have change management that would help them cope with ever evolving changes. As businesses continue to experience growth, the contemporary businesses world continue to become complex as new and old businesses develop new competitive strategies that triggers change in the way business is conducted. For instance, since the law of controlling monopoly was enacted, Ooredoo has been facing stiff competition from other plays in the market. Vodafone has, for example, been gaining grounds slowly as customers start to focus on a wide range of factors that are favourable to them. Low prices have been the main focus for customers since the market has been preoccupied by high calling rates. In this regard, Ooredoo has no option other than change management to cope with the new challenges for it to continue being at the top as it used to be during monopolistic time. Although many people wou ld argue that Ooredoo did not have change management in its earlier years when it used to operate on monopoly basis, it is arguable that the company employed organisational strategy to provide ever changing dynamics of business in regard to emergence of new products and services. However, the change for strategy in the recent years is what has triggered more physical changes especially on pricing that has made people think that the company just begun change management concept due to competition.
Saturday, January 25, 2020
Organisational processes in the Walt Disney Company
Organisational processes in the Walt Disney Company According to De Wit and Meyer (2010) Organisational processes refer to the arrangements, procedures and routines used to control and coordinate the various people and units within the organisation. This can be both formalized processes that span the entire organisation, or more informal organisational processes. The first category can be processes such as business planning and control procedures, final budgeting and reporting. Other control and coordination processes are more limited in scope, such as new product development meetings, yearly sales conferences, weekly quality circles, web based expert panels and quarterly meetings with the board of directors. Informal organisational processes are more about personal networking and influencing decision-making through factors such as informal negotiation. The case of Walt Disney: Control and coordination mechanisms: Corporate governance guidelines: One of the internally control mechanisms in the Walt Disney Company is the supervision done by the board of directors. According to the Walt Disney Company web site, the responsibility of the board of directors is to supervise and direct the management of the company in the interest and the benefit of the companys stakeholders. The board act directly through committees and have the following duties: Overseeing the conduct of the companys business to evaluate whether the business being properly managed Reviewing/approving the companys major financial objectives, plans and actions Reviewing/approving major changes in, and determination of other major issues respecting the appropriate auditing and accounting principles and practices to be used in the preparation of the financial statements Assessing the major risk factors Regularly evaluate the performance and approving the compensation to the CEO. And with the advice of the CEO, evaluate the performance of principal senior executives Planning for succession with respect to the position of CEO and monitor management succession planning for other executives Delegate the authority and responsibility for managing the business in relation to guidelines (Disney Web page). The corporate administration of the company: Another control and coordination mechanism is The Walt Disney Company corporate team, who support services to the business units and affiliates of the Walt Disney Company. The individual responsibilities in this group can be strategic, tactical, diverse and specialized. It can span the whole organisation or focus more on the corporate division. This team work collectively to analyze potential opportunities, assess results and recommend future direction. The corporate planning and control group of the administration is divided into five units: Corporate controllership: This unit is responsible for overseeing the financial statements of the company and also other finance reporting and control functions. Tasks included for this group is developing presentations to senior management and the Audit committee of the board of directors concerning the financial performance of the company, as well as update of significant accounting standards. In addition to this, they work closely with investor relations and corporate communications departments with respect to financial communication. Management audit: The Partners with financial, operational and IT executives to understand their internal control environment, risk and risk mitigation activities. They develop and execute a plan to address key risks and also promote an overall risk and control awareness in the company. Enterprise Finance Processes: Is responsible for optimizing the companys finance and accounting operations. This is done through process improvement, finance system sustainability controls and data governance. As a result, they partner with controllership, planning and financial system support teams to maintain the ongoing efficiency of the financial systems and reliability of data. They also support the finance processes, reporting and system improvements for the company. Operations Planning: The focus and responsibility is on company-wide operating, long-range and capital planning, quarterly and annual earnings and cash flow forecasting. Furthermore all major capital projects and monitoring and assessment of all segment/business unit operating performance. Moreover they are evaluating the financial impact on key business decisions and alternatives, and projects aimed at improving the financial performance of the company. They also make proposals to the board of directors concerning these matters. Accounting Shared Services: Their mission is to provide exceptional service, low cost processing and value added information/consulting for enterprise vide accounting and HR functions. The group work with all the business units to consolidate and optimize transaction oriented processes. Corporate synergy and special projects: This unit under corporate administration of the company develops plans and strategies to foster collaboration across all business units. This department work with identifying, communicating and supporting the annual company-wide marketing and synergy initiatives and partners with the different divisions in order to drive those priorities into their business. Corporate Strategy business Planning and Technology: Work with business units to optimize their strategies at the segment level. One can also say that the end result of an organisational process is an organisation. In other words a whole consisting of unified parts acting in harmony to execute tasks to achieve the goals both effectively and efficiently (http://www.cliffsnotes.com/study_guide/The-Organizational-Process.topicArticleId-8944,articleId-8875.html). It can be said to be the process of the product life cycle. In The Walt Disney Company and its Media and Broadcasting segment, the company has established a culture were innovation is encouraged. As stated, Since our brand is innovative, entertaining and inviting, we create a similar learning environment that encourages employees to learn and develop in engaging and developing ways (http://corporate.disney.go.com/careers/learning.html). As a result of this, the company offer a variety of training programs and learning opportunities. In addition to this the company recognize and reward their employees both individually and in teams (http://corporate.disney.go.com/careers/rewards_and_recognition.html). This can also be said to be part of the organisational processes of the company.
Friday, January 17, 2020
Somatic Marker Hypothesis
Critically evaluate to what extent the ‘somatic-marker hypothesis’ explains how decisions are made in the face of an uncertain outcome. In mind of Kim Sterelny’s (2007) statement that ‘Human Life is one long decision tree’, it is not surprising that there has been a vast amount of research into the process of how we evaluate the desirability of alternative choices and select a particular option.One area of research, of particular interest here, is Damasio’s Somatic Marker Hypothesis (SMH) (1991) which uses the neuroeconomic approach through its integration of the fields of psychology, neuroscience and economics to invoke an understanding of how one makes a decision (Damasio, Tranel & Damasio, 1998). This Theory supports the RAF hypothesis that significant risky outcomes elicit emotional reactions (Stanfey, Loewenstein, McClue & Cohen, 2006,).The SMH proposes that stochastic decision making is the result of emotion-based biasing signals in the b ody- in particular from the Ventromedial Prefrontal Cortex (VMPFC) (Bechara, Damasio, Tranel & Damasio, 2005). This concept will be discussed in further detail (with reference to it’s origin and experimental support), followed by a critical analysis of the extent to which the SMH successfully explains what it contends to.Since the SMH focuses solely on the role of emotion in decision making, the Rationale Planning Model (1995) will also be examined in comparison to the SMH for it’s explanation of decision making as a purely logical and rational process. The Rational Planning Model by Banfield (1995) proposes that the decision maker consciously undergoes five steps when coming to a decision and so approaches the choice in a very rational manner. Subsequently, an evaluation of the two theories for stochastic decision making will follow to discern how well they account for stochastic decision making.The SMH stemmed from attempts to explain why a patient (E. V. R. ), with an ablation of the VMPFC, often engaged in behaviors that were detrimental to his wellbeing (Damasio, 1996). Emotion was originally believed to be a disruptive force in decision making, but since the VMPFC is in charge of emotional function, it was now speculated to be essential for the ability to make a decision. Further investigation into this phenomenon through neuropsychological examination, found that those patients with damage to their VMPFC evinced a generally flat affect and an inability to respond to emotional situations (Bolla et al. 003). Thus, Damasio extracted that the decision making deficits experienced by these patients was a result of this altered psychophysiological response (Damasio, 1996). His SMH contends that when presented with a decision, the normal brain will use the VMPFC to react emotionally to the situation and generate ‘somatic markers’ in order to come to a decision. A somatic marker is best defined as the brains construction of a physiolog ical change that it apprehends for the selection of a particular strategy. It supposedly guides attention towards the more advantageous option (Dalgleish, 2004).This enables the organism to react quicker to external stimuli as it no longer needs to wait for the activity to emerge in the periphery before it can elicit a reaction (Dalgleish, 2004). Furthermore, the VMPFC is thought to support association learning between complex situations and the somatic changes usually experienced during a particular situation (Jameson, Hinson, & Whitney, 2004). Put simply, once a previous situation that elicited similar somatic markers is identified, the VMPFC can use past experiences to rapidly evaluate possible behavior responses.So when the VMPFC suffers impairment, the somatic marker system can no longer be activated, resulting in an absence of physiological feedback and an inability to predict long term punishments and rewards. This occurrence has been termed ‘Myopia for the futureâ€⠄¢, where a decision may only be formulated by the use of a logical cost-benefit analysis (Dalgleish, 2004). However, if one was presented with an uncertain situation, the result would be marked impairment. The SMH substantiates its argument through the experimental paradigm: the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT) (Bechara et al, 1997, cited in Dunn, Dalgleish & Lawrence, 2006).The task measures decision making in patients with VMPFC brain lesions and compares it to those people with a normally functioning VMPFC. The experiment involves selecting a card from a choice of four decks- each of which attributes different levels of reward and punishment in the form of winning or losing pretend money. Two of the decks provide a low reward and a low level of punishment and were labeled the advantageous decks. The remaining two decks provide a high reward and a high level of punishment and were named the disadvantageous decks. Control articipants initially sampled both decks equally but shifted their choice to the advantageous decks after experiencing the high punishment from the disadvantageous one. Conversely, the subjects with damage to their VMPFC were seemingly insensitive to the negative consequences of the disadvantageous decks and would continually choose from these decks on account of their high reward (Dunn et al. 2006). The study concludes that the reason the patients failed to comprehend the advantageous decks as the more profitable option, was due to their inability to generate the somatic markers necessary for such a realization (Dunn et al. 006). Furthermore, Bechara et al. (2005) combined the gambling task with the measurement of skin-conductance response (SCR). It was found that control subjects elicited larger anticipatory SCRs before picking from the disadvantageous decks as oppose to the advantageous decks. The absence of anticipatory SCRs in the VMPFC lesion group confirmed the failure for the VMPFC to activate negative, physiological marking signals based o n previous punishment history which ultimately made them insensitive to the possibility of future punishment from the deck (Schmitt, Brinkley & Newman, 1999).Hence, a positive correlation between successful IGT performance and a healthy participants’ ability to develop somatic marker signals was reported. The extensive validation of the IGT, strengthens the evidence for the role of emotion in decision making. For example, patients with various kinds of frontal lobe damage and patients with lesions to the lateral temporal or occipital cortex have also been tested in the IGT (Best, Williams & Coccaro, 2002). Of these patients, only the ones with damage to their VMPFC appear to be impaired on the task (Bechara, Damasio & Damasio, 2000).Furthermore, Overman (2004) has conducted a study outside of the Iowa laboratory and has replicated Damasio’s findings with the extension of gender differences. Overman’s results showed that adolescent men chose from the decks on the basis of long-term outcome only. Moreover, the predictive validity of the IGT and therefore SMH, has demonstrated an association between the response of OCD patients to pharmacotherapy and performance on the IGT (Cavedini, Bassi, Zozi & Bellodi, 2004).This depicts the behavioral form of the IGT to be a very sensitive measure of decision making as its results are highly applicable to real world decision making (e. g. those with OCD). Although the study does much to support the SMH argument, it has also received a lot of criticism which will be subsequently addressed. It has been contested that the work from the Iowa laboratory provides only superficial support for the SMH, since closer analysis can reveal issues that potentially undermine its argument for decision making in the face of an uncertain outcome.For example, Maia & McClelland (2004) contend that the IGT can be performed through access to conscious, explicit knowledge since the task allows a lengthy time to deliberate over each decision- especially since the outcomes are presented in explicit numerical form. Thus, they refute the claim that task acquisition necessarily requires the generation of non conscious ‘somatic marker’ signals which effectively weakens the extent to which the SMH accurately explains decision making in terms of emotion- for it may not be the result of an implicit neural mechanism (Maia & McClelland, 2004. Another criticism of the IGT (and therefore the SMH) is that the patients with VMPFC damage could have been quite apathetic to the study’s demands and expectations. Barrash, Tranel & Anderson (2000) report that patients with lesions to their VMPFC often experience symptoms of apathy and are actually capable of improving their emotional response to affective images if instructed to look carefully. Therefore, if the patients are in fact competent of generating anticipatory SCRs and successfully completing the task, it can be postulated that enhancing their en gagement levels would raise their results to match the control groups.In terms of the implications this would have for the SMH, it would serve as evidence that emotion does not play that great a role in decision making since they can still obtain the same results with impaired emotional ability. Furthermore, Fellows and Farah (2005) have suggested that the syndrome of apathy may deserve more attention in understanding impaired decision making. Similarly, another symptom of VMPFC damage, which can adversely affect performance in the IGT, is impaired reversal learning (Rolls, Hornak, Wade & McGrath, 1994).The IGT is centred on a response reversal in which involves a shift in preference from the two initially rewarding decks to the other two decks due to subsequent punishment (Rolls et al. 1994). Both Fellows & Farah (2005) and Rolls et al (1994), corroborate that lesions to the VMPFC allow normal acquisition but impaired reversal on simple reversal learning tasks. Therefore, the impai red reversal learning, rather than the inability to generate somatic markers, may well account for why patients find it so difficult to perform correctly in the IGT.Fellows & Farah (2005) devised a study to test this notion by removing the response reversal. It was found that by eliminating the rewards of the two disadvantageous decks in the opening trials, the performance of the VMPFC impaired patients was the same as that of the control volunteers. This research suggests that the IGT may not have been testing the role of emotion in decision making but instead, how capable the subjects were in their response reversal.Therefore, the extent to which the SMH explains how decisions are made is further limited since the evidence that emotions play a direct role is very weak. Additionally, the SMH is arguably only applicable to certain decision making and cannot account for those decisions that need rationality and a thoughtful, conscious planning process. Banfield’s Rational Plan ning Model (1959) (RPM), on the other hand, may serve as a good explanation for decision making in such a situation.Banfield states that a rational decision is made when the decision maker lists all the opportunities for action, recognises all the consequences and selects the action based on the preferred consequence. Additionally, Banfield defines a ‘plan’ as a decision with regard to a course of action, involving a similar process as any rational choice. The RPM consists of four main stages: the analysis of the situation, the end reduction and elaboration (formulating an image of the future had an option been picked), the design of courses of action, and the comparative evaluation of consequences (Banfield, 1995).Banfield’s RPM is the most widely subscribed planning theory to date and although it has experienced criticism, it has been hailed very useful in explaining how we make important decisions. According to Stiftel (2000), important decisions are ones whic h demand explicit conscious planning such as buying a house or taking a new job. These decisions are arguably unlikely to be a result of the emotional hunches or gut instincts that Damasio discusses since they almost always involved a mental list of pros and cons before arriving at a decision.However, this theory fails to explain why some people make irrational and illogical decisions in the face of an uncertain outcome. For example, criminals do not logically plan or weigh up the consequences of an action before undertaking, which highlights that there are multiple explanations for how people make decisions. Banfield recognises that people are generally very opportunistic in their daily decision making as rather than materialising a course of action, people will improvise and meet each crisis as it arises.For instance, large industries rarely look forward more than five to ten years and government planning is even less effective (Stiftel). Since Banfield himself appreciates that th e majority of decisions are the unintended outcome of a ‘social process rather than the conscious product of deliberation and calculation’, there is clearly a cause to investigate the role of social processes in decision making (Banfield, 1995 pp. 13). In conclusion, the extent to which the Somatic Marker Hypothesis explains decision making in the face of an uncertain outcome is limited.As it has been demonstrated, Damasio’s SMH attempts to pin decision making down to emotional biasing signals alone and has received various criticisms for its empirical support. For example, it attempts to validate its theory by testing VMPFC patients who may already be too cognitively impaired to perform the task (Barrash et al, 2000). Additionally, the extent to which the IGT measures an implicit response has also been questioned on the grounds that the task allows a great deal of time for deliberation (Maia & McClelland).Thus, Banfield’s Rational Planning Model was exami ned as an alternative explanation for decision making. The RPM does a lot to discredit the SMH and is essentially a valuable explanation of how we make decisions since it highlights that the majority of important decisions force the individual into a conscious process of planning and analysing. However, like the SMH, the RPM alone cannot explain decision making for there are individuals (criminals) who defy deliberation. This highlights that decisions are most likely the cause of an interplay of factors, depending on both the situation and person.To summarise, the SMH does little to explain the tricky phenomenon of decision making in the face of an uncertain outcome- but it would be too deterministic to deem this process down to just one theory alone. Referencing: Banfield, E. C. (1959), â€Å"Ends and means in planning†, International Social Science Journal, Vol. 11, pp. 361-8. Barrash, J. , Tranel, D. , Anderson, S. W. , (2000). Acquired personality distrubances associated with bilateral damage to the ventromedial prefrontal region. Developmental Neuropsychology 18 (3), 355–381. Bechara, A. , Damasio, H. , Damasio, A. R. , (2000).Emotion, decision making and the orbitofrontal cortex. Cerebral Cortex 10, 295–307 Bechara, A. , Damasio, H. , Tranel, D. , Damasio, A. R. , (2005). The Iowa Gambling Task and the somatic marker hypothesis: some questions and answers. Trends in Cogntive Sciences 9 (4), 159–162. Best, M. , Williams, J. M. , Coccaro, E. F. , (2002). Evidence for a dysfunctional prefrontal circuit in patients with an impulsive aggressive disorder. Proceedings of the National Academy of Science USA 99 (12), 8448–8453. Bolla, K. I. , Eldreth, D. A. , London, E. D. , Kiehl, K. A. , Mouratidis, M. , Contoreggi, C. , et al. (2003). Orbitofrontal cortex dysfunction in abstinent cocaine abusers performing a decision-making task. Neuroimage 19 (3), 1085–1094. Cavedini, P. , Bassi, T. , Zorzi, C. , Bellodi, L. , (2004). The advantages of choosing antiobsessive therapy according to decision-making functioning. Journal of Clinical Psychopharmacology 24 (6), 628–631. Dalgleish, T. , 2004. The emotional brain. Nature Neuroscience Reviews 5 (7), 583–589. Jameson, T. L. , Hinson, J. M. , Whitney, P. , 2004. Components of working memory and somatic markers in decision making. Psychonomic Bulletin and Review 11 (3), 515–520.Damasio, A. R. , 1996. The somatic marker hypothesis and the possible functions of the prefrontal cortex. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London (series B) 351 (1346), 1413–1420. Damasio, A. R. , Tranel, D. , Damasio, H. C. (1998) Somatic markers and the guidance of behaviour. In Jekins, M. J. , Oatley, K & Stein, L. M. (Eds. ), Human Emotion: a reader (pp 122- 125). Oxford: Blackwell. Dunn, D. B. , Dalgleish, T. , Lawrence, A. D. (2006). The Somatic Marker Hypothesis: A critical evaluation. Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews. 30. , 23 9–271. Fellows, L. K. , Farah, M. J. 2005a. Different underlying impairments in decision-making following ventromedial and dorsolateral frontal lobe damage in humans. Cerebral Cortex 15 (1), 58–63. Jameson, T. L. , Hinson, J. M. , & Whitney, P. (2004). Components of working memory and somatic markers in decision making. Psychological Bulletin & Review, 11, 515–520 Maia, T. V. , McClelland, J. L. , 2004. A reexamination of the evidence for the somatic marker hypothesis: what participants really know in the Iowa gambling task. Proceedings of the National Academy for Science USA 101 (45), 16075–16080. Overman, W. H. , 2004.Sex differences in early childhood, adolescence, and adulthood on cognitive tasks that rely on orbital prefrontal cortex. Brain and Cognition 55 (1), 134–147. Rolls, E. T. , Hornak, J. , Wade, D. , McGrath, J. , 1994. Emotion-related learning in patients with social and emotional changes associated with frontal lobe damage. Journal of Neurology Neurosurgery and Psychiatry 57 (12), 1518–1524. Schmitt, W. A. , Brinkley, A. C. , Newman, P. J. (1999). Testing Damasio’s Somatic Marker Hypothesis With Psychopathic Individuals: Risk takers or Risk Averse. Journal of Abnormal Psychology. 108 (3), 538-543.Sanfey, A. G. , Loewenstein, G. , McClure, S. M. , & Cohen, J. D. (2006). Neuroeconomics: cross-currents in research on decision-making. Trends in Cognitive Science, 10, 108-116. Sterelny, K. (2007). Cognitive Load and Human Decision, or, Three Ways of Rolling the Rock Up Hill. In Carruthers, P. , Laurence, S. , & Stich, S. (Eds. ), The Innate Mind: Volume 2: Culture and Cognition (PP. 148-152). Oxford Scholarship Online. Stiftel, B (2000). â€Å"Plannin theory. II. The national AICP examination preparation course guidebook. Ed Roshi Pajaseyed. Am. Inst. Cert. Planners: Washington DC. Pp. 4-16
Thursday, January 9, 2020
The Benefits of a Gluten-Free Diet - 2019 Words
The Benefits of a Gluten-Free Diet The word gluten comes from the Latin word glutin, meaning glue (Merriam-Webster). Gluten is a protein that is found in wheat and most other cereal grains, it gives dough and other produces their cohesiveness. It is very important to society, because without it, traditional baking would not be possible. The chainlike gluten molecules form an elastic network that traps gas and makes the dough expand (Keis). In other words, it is what makes brownies and other baked goods rise. Gluten related diseases are rapidly increasing. According to Tanda Cook, about ten thousand years ago, people in the East started cultivating grains to eat. They have been a part of the human diet for thousands of years in some places of the world, but it has only been part of the North American, Asian, African, and part of Europe’s diet for a relatively short period of time. In these places where grains were not consumed, people hunted and fished for protein, and got vitamins from fruits and vegetables. As the World started to develop more, farm techniques were improved, giving way to a more controlled way of agriculture. Through exploration and expansion, these techniques spread worldwide. Mediterranean countries such as Spain, France, and Portugal imported these grains and farming technology to the New World through the Columbian Exchange. Although gluten bearing foods were introduced worldwide, Joannie Ham says it was not until the industrial revolution when theseShow More RelatedBenefits Of A Gluten Free Diet809 Words  | 4 Pagestry to promote better health with unique diets. The increasingly popular gluten-free diet is just one of them. This diet, originally a way to treat the immune disease Celiac disease, has become one of the most popular (and controversial) diets on the market. Trying to eat a gluten-free diet in drug rehabilitation is a noble goal, but it can be tricky. However, if you have Celiac disease, you obviously are going to have to learn how to live without gluten during rehabilitation. But if you re simplyRead MoreGluten Free Diet And Gluten Food984 Words  | 4 Pages The Gluten-free diet, a shitshow Gluten-free, it has become the blazing slogan on the majority of food items, including food items that never had gluten to begin with, such as water. This push towards ridding our diets of grains has become extremely mainstream, but is this diet as healthy as it has been made out to be? While there can be some benefits to the gluten-free diet, there is a lot of scientific evidence that suggests that products containing gluten are a staple of a healthy diet. EvenRead MoreThe Human Species Is The Endless Search For Individual Perfection1471 Words  | 6 Pagesquest for perfection is fad diets; they are spurred on by the desire for a perfect physical appearance of the individual, and the profit-centered food production companies. Fad diets, such as the Paleo diet, the Atkins diet, Celebrity Cookie diet, and the Master Cleanse, are popular among the American public because they promise bodily perfection if one follows them. However, what the mass media fails to communicate to the publ ic is the negative effects of following a fad diet, to oneself and the generalRead MoreGluten Free And Gluten Food1683 Words  | 7 PagesGluten-Free or Not Gluten-Free, That is the Question: The Pros or Cons of a Gluten-Free Diet Medically and Commercially. My brother-in-law has Celiac Disease and due to this disease he has to adhere to a gluten-free diet. Due to relatively close ties to myself, I have become curious about the gluten free diet and how it effects someone on it. As a result of this curiosity, I have become interested in how gluten effects people both with and without Celiac Disease. Thus, due to my familial closenessRead MoreThe Human Body Is A Complex System, Embedded With Defense1683 Words  | 7 Pagesover the world. In fact, this protein is gluten, and as the name suggests, it acts as a ‘glue’ to hold the shape of the product it will be incorporated into, like bread and pasta. Gluten is present in many items that are used daily; this includes various foods, medication and supplements, cosmetics, and hygiene products. Although gluten is present ubiquitously, it can cause hypersensitive reactions in individuals with celiac disease (CD) and non-celiac gluten sensitivity (NCGS). Celiac disease isRead MoreA Child On The Autism Spectrum1310 Words  | 6 Pages Can a change in the diet help to control some of the side effects of being on the autism spectrum? To answer this question, we need to look at several things 1. How can a specialized diet help a child on the autism spectrum? 2. What are the common diets for autism and what is the difference between these diets. 3. What is the gluten free casein free diet all about and how do you implement it for a child with autism? 4. What evidence is there in support of specialized diets for autism from the medicalRead MoreHealth Benefits Of A Free Diet1142 Words  | 5 PagesMany people say they are â€Å"going Gluten- Free†. This means that the person is transitioning to a diet where they do not eat gluten. By doing this, they are excluding wheat, barley, rye and possibly oats from their diet. Gluten is a protein that is not crucial to being an overall healthy person. (4) The Gluten- Free Diet was creat ed for those who have medical reasons to not eat gluten. Medical reasons could be celiac disease, wheat allergies, gluten sensitivity, dermatitis herpetiformis, ataxia andRead MoreGluten Food And Gluten Free Diet1097 Words  | 5 Pagesdiscuss further is the gluten free diet. I have chosen this because I have a close friend who has celiac disease who has followed a gluten free diet all her life. I have been around her for a while and she has always followed the diet very strictly. I have seen how difficult it can be to follow and I have also seen what happens when she doesn’t follow the gluten free diet and how badly it can make her feel. A gluten free diet is a diet that does not include the protein gluten. Gluten is commonly foundRead MoreThe Effects Of Autistic Children972 Words  | 4 PagesAutistic child recommended the GFCF diet Ani jumped at the chance. Within four months of starting the diet, Ara had significantly improved. Ara was potty trained, had begun reading, speaking in sentences, and communicating with other children. Autism is a developmental disorder. It impairs a persons communication and interactive abilities.The diets for autism are effective in reversing the signs of autism. The Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) has many signs and diets that help children to be able toRead MoreSymptoms And Treatment Of Celiac Disease1701 Words  | 7 Pagesdiseases benefit only one organism at the expense of another (exploitative). Much like an exploitative situation an organism can cause a disadvantageous situation for itself, such is the case in hypochondriasis which is when a person believes that they have an illness and starts to develop symptoms because of this belief. Celiac disease is an intestinal disorder caused by an autoimmune response to an individual’s own tissue, this is triggered by the ingestion of anything which contains gluten or gluten-related
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